If you don't believe that what you are doing is not immoral, then why hide? Even accounting for the various differences in people's beliefs ethical behavior can basically be defined as the stuff you would do even if you knew you were going to get caught. The second you start thinking about hiding your actions chances are good that what you are up to is unethical, illegal, or both.
Here's a hint then privacy-boy, don't put a transmitter designed to track you on your windshield, and instead of paying automatically use coins. It's impossible to be anonymous when you have a transmitter with a unique id stuck to your car.
If you really want to be anonymous walk to work, preferably with a bag over your head.
Why in the world would I want my software vendor to have high revenues? The reason that Linux vendors have lower profit margins is because there is nothing to stop you from switching vendors if they gouge you. Linux is all about lowering the TCO of the solution, and a big chunk of that lower TCO comes from getting Microsoft's hand out of your pocket. More and more customers are realizing this and eventually Microsoft is going to have no choice but to try and compete with the lower prices.
The good news is that sales are up, especially for "client" computers.
The real danger to Microsoft isn't Linux's ability to generate profits, the real danger is Linux's ability to commoditize software. Eventually Microsoft's customers are going to learn that they can get more for less.
Spot on. All the NVidia performance in the world doesn't do me a darn bit of good without a Free Software driver. Sure, I can buy an NVidia card and hope they keep supporting their closed source driver, but I would much rather purchase hardware that came with a Free Software driver (even if the hardware isn't quite as spiffy). The fact that the card will be cheaper is also a huge bonus.
It is not that Linux networking is really that much harder than Windows networking. In fact, in some ways Linux is probably easier, but only once you get to know how it works. That's one of the major problems that Linux faces. Even in those instances where Linux is better than Windows most folks are already used to doing things the Windows way.
Linuxers certainly want to "refine" Linux, but they don't want to copy Windows warts and all, and so you end up with bits that seem tricky.
In the end you have to balance the cost of training your employees to use Linux against the ongoing costs of paying for Windows (and upgrading your employees' Windows skills). I know that for me the switch has been very beneficial, and the cost of relearning was definitely worth it, but Linux is still not for everyone.
For example, in my own case the added productivity came about because I now had access to a much more powerful set of tools. Python, bash, make, grep, sed, sort, etc. have allowed me to do some fairly amazing things, and they are available on basically any Linux machine. Sometimes scripts can easily do things that are nearly impossible to do with a GUI.
For a far more entertaining perspective watch some Red Dwarf on TV (or read the excellent books Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life). Pay particular attention to the bits about Talkie Toaster, they are hilarious.
Someone will ill intentions towards the US could infiltrate Microsoft just as easily as the PostgreSQL core developers group (to pick a Free Software package at random). The difference is that at Microsoft there are only a limited number of people that might be able to catch the problem, and they might also be "in on the joke." I certainly agree that the government should have their own security experts look over the source code to any package they use. Free Software makes that much easier. Heck, I look forward to the day when some of the CVS servers (or whatever) that I get my source from are.gov domains.
Yes, I realize that the benchmark was old (both MySQL and PostgreSQL have new versions out since then), but it is still more indicative of the real MySQL vs. PostgreSQL benchmarks than the MySQL benchmarks up on mysql.com.
And yes, I realize that the InnoDB tables have row level locking and transaction support. I never said that MySQL was bad, in fact, it is getting quite good. I just have a fundamental problem with the "benchmarketing" that the MySQL folks have been using for years. There is a world of difference between their benchmarks and how you use a database in real life.
My question for you is have you taken a look at the newer versions of PostgreSQL and seen how they react under the types of loads you put MySQL under? My guess is that you would find that PostgreSQL also performs very well, and you don't have to put up with MySQL's shortcomings. Crashing a PostgreSQL box, for example, is quite a bit less painful.
I used to hear that sort of FUD all of the time. Mostly from people who had spent a great deal of time and money getting certified in some other vendor's software. Linux and Free Software are dangerous to these people because they seriously impact the value of these people's skills. If more and more businesses and organizations start using Free Software, then there will be less demand for their particular skillset.
Many of the points that the GAO guy brought up are simply not true, and all of them should be taken with a huge grain of salt. There haven't been any "massive security" issues with Linux (although the same can't be said for some other PC based server operating systems written in Redmond), and there haven't been any major reliability problems either. In fact, anecdotal evidence shows that Linux is more secure and more reliable than its commercial competitors. As for commercial support, I have been using Linux since 1994, and there has always been someone you could call for support (granted, they were probably fairly small). Nowadays you can contract support from IBM or HP, which should be support enough for just about anyone. And if he thinks that Free Software is "haphazard" he should see what passes for development in some closed source commercial companies. Borland's Interbase apparently has had a backdoor password for years that wasn't found until the source was opened, and some versions of Excell shipped with a full blown flight simulator included. You can put anything in a commercial software product without anyone being the wiser. The last point is especially weak. The GPL, arguably the most restrictive Free Software license, doesn't even attempt to control how you use the software. You don't have to pay one bit of attention to the GPL unless you distribute software based on GPLed source. Most commercial software EULA's on the other hand have all sorts of end user stipulations. In other words there are no "licensing issues" and you certainly wouldn't have to put your lab results into the public domain.
This particular brand of FUD hasn't worked particularly well against Linux because so many folks have used Linux successfully. Linux's low price also makes it easy to run your own tests. Linux has simply become too popular to ignore these days. There are simply too many happy Linux users to overlook the chance to get good software at a very low price.
The so-called MySQL benchmark compares MySQL and other databases doing a whole pile of somewhat obscure database functions one at a time. If your database only has one user, and you spend a lot of time truncating tables, then MySQL is probably the correct choice. For a much more realistic benchmark try here. After looking at MySQL's benchmarks I had to conclude that either the MySQL developers are ridiculously naive about real world data loads or that they are being deliberately deceitful. No one cares how a database performs when there is one single user.
MySQL is a fine database if your are creating an appliation that is read intensive and that doesn't need any of PostgreSQL's more advanced features.
Your post was certainly on topic, but the real issue still isn't GE foods. That's just a convenient excuse that the Africans know the European public will buy. The real reasons for rejecting aid is almost always political. Some despot wants the folks that are starving to death to die, and he doesn't want foreign intervention.
Don't be so gullible. It isn't about patents or about the European grain market. Those in power in Zimbabwe are using famine as a weapon of mass destruction. You can bet that their supporters will have plenty to eat, but their opponents will not. If the people starving were able to receive aid then the government would have to spend money to kill them.
Microsoft didn't seem like too bad a taskmaster compared to IBM. After all, at least the hardware was open. All of a sudden there were all sorts of companies that were happy to sell you compantible DOS based machines. Now the software is slowly becoming a commodity as well, and Microsoft will suffer the same way that IBM suffered when hardware became a commodity.
The problem is that, so far anyway, the Free Software community hasn't given a fig for Java. They are perfectly happy with tools like Python and Zope, and Perl, and plain old C.
Free Software hackers have a lot of experience chasing someone else's specification, and for the most part it has turned out to be much harder than simply creating your own software from scratch. The canonical example is Motif. Lesstif was in development for years before it was even halfway useful. GTK, on the other hand, sprang into existence relatively quickly. Likewise Kaffe has been somewhat useful for years, without being something you would be able to use in production. Recently it would appear that they have completely given up chasing the new Sun specifications.
It's Sun's ball game to win or lose in this particular case, but Sun needs the Free Software community if they plan on beating.NET. Rest assured Sun isn't going to win over the Free Software hackers unless they release the code to their JVM. At the very least they need to release some specifications like Microsoft has done. Heck, there are quite a few hackers that are looking seriously at Mono, for crying out loud. Java hasn't done well in the Free Software world to this point, and it is likely to do much worse if a Free Software variant of.NET emerges.
If Microsoft developers and Free Software developers both end up developing.NET applications Java will go the way of the dodo.
My point is that by not investing at all you are cutting off your nose to spite your face (as my Grandma always says). Sure, some stocks might have lost a third of their value, but chances are that most of that value was hype anyhow. The trick is to stick to basics, dividends, low P/E rations, etc. Worst comes to worse you could simply invest in broad-based index funds like the S&P 500. These types of investments are not going to get the high flying returns that draw speculators, they will encourage honest businesses, and they will be more rewarding than simply putting your money in a bank (in the long run anyhow).
Hold up there cowboy. Investing in the future is still a smart thing to do, and the stock market has historically been the best performer around. There are still plenty of companies with management that have their eye focused on the ball. It just takes a little extra work investing in these sorts of companies.
The stock market is like anything else, if it seems like the deal is too good to be true, then it probably is. If you keep that in mind and invest for long term performance then you will be much better off in the market then in a bank account.
You are certainly correct about Microsoft delivering on time and with more than most folks bargained for..NET was more or less precisely what Microsoft promised, and it was delivered in a very timely manner. However, the reason that it isn't selling doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it has a poor slogan. The reason that.NET hasn't gained much traction is that it A) requires Microsoft's largest developer community (VB programmers) to completely rethink and rewrite their code, probably in another language and B) they marketed.NET in such a way that the cool bits were marketed alongside several bits that were not cool and that no one was interested in (Hailstorm).
Yes, I know that it is possible to connect to legacy code via COM, and I realize that you can create web services without Hailstorm or Passport, but that certainly isn't the message that Microsoft has been preaching. Whenever folks complained about all the changes to VB all Microsoft could do was point out how cool C# was. Whenever Microsoft talked about web services they tripped all over themselves explaining how for thousands of dollars a year websites could access the information that Microsoft was gathering on their Passport users.
Needless to say neither of these messages were what consumers and developers wanted to hear.
So don't blame.NET's lackluster sales on complexity, but instead put the blame where it belongs. Microsoft has been painting a picture that makes them happy instead of one that makes their customers happy.
No, the CEO has a legal responsibility to maximize the profitability of the enterprise, the stock price is only tangential to the real issue. All of the companies that are currently involved in scandals were far more concerned with hype than with making real profits, and the reason behind this was simple. The management was being rewarded for hyping up the stock and not for the actual performance of the company.
Stock options dilute the value of the shares held by investors and then cause the management to spend more time worrying about the stock price than the actual financial status of the company. After all, why should the CEO of WorldCom care that WorldCom is going bankrupt if he has just made a quadzillion dollars in stock options.
I still believe that stock options are a powerful incentive, but they should be counted as expenses (because that is what they really are) to keep companies from abusing the policy.
Everyone has the right to give up their privacy in exchange for preferential treatment. If some schmoe doesn't mind that [insert supermarket] is tracking their buying habits, then why should you get upset about it. If you don't like discount cards, don't use one.
It would be entirely different if the Federal government mandated that we all use such cards and then required all stores to share their information with the FBI.
Exactly. Since most of these CEOs derived a substantial portion of their income from stock options it was in their best interest to downplay reality. Instead of managing the company for longterm growth and prosperity they settled for managing the stock price into the stratosphere.
All the more reason to pay your management with money, and not with stock options. If you do want to pay your management with stock options you should at least count that as an expense.
TCO for Linux might be too high if you plan on putting a PC on everyone's desk, but if you roll out Linux desktops intelligently (ie. using thin clients) then TCO is far lower than Windows, even including retraining costs. You see, the beauty of Linux is that, for the first time in recorded history there is a fairly comprehensive set of applications that can be served up via X11. One commodity Linux box (provided it has enough memory) can easily handle hundreds of X terminals. So instead of hundreds of PCs to babysit you would be left with one server per hundred users (or so). Backups, software upgrades, account changes, client configuration, etc. all become trivial matters when you are only dealing with one machine. Likewise upgrading the clients becomes far more economical.
Yes, there are some niggly little client details that require some work, but it is definitely possible to set up Linux clients that are functional and userfriendly, and the cost savings in hardware and software (and especially staffing) can be enormous. It's even possible to use Citrix to use "legacy" software during the changeover.
Re:Relatively unbiased compared to past reports
on
Forbes on Linux
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· Score: 2
The lawsuit has little or nothing to do with it. The real problem is that Microsoft, in a desperate attempt to keep their revenues up, has become even more anti-consumer than ever. Instead of giving the consumer what he or she wants Microsoft is spending more and more of its time and efforts on initiatives that actually hurt their users. Microsoft's users did not ask for the new licensing schemes, the new anti-piracy code, built in DRM software, and a whole host of other annoying features.
Think about it for a moment. Windows XP is essentially Windows 2000 with some anti-piracy measures. While Apple is busy advertising how easy it is to create MP3s with a Macintosh Microsoft is busy trying to replace MP3s with something that the music industry could control. For most of Microsoft's customers Windows XP is less useful than the previous version.
This isn't really anything new. Microsoft has historically used all sorts of tricks to force their customers along the upgrade path. The difference is that in the past Microsoft could afford to act this way because they were the only game in town, but that isn't necessarily the case any more. Everyone else was vastly more expensive. Nowadays, however, there are affordable alternatives.
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If you don't believe that what you are doing is not immoral, then why hide? Even accounting for the various differences in people's beliefs ethical behavior can basically be defined as the stuff you would do even if you knew you were going to get caught. The second you start thinking about hiding your actions chances are good that what you are up to is unethical, illegal, or both.
Here's a hint then privacy-boy, don't put a transmitter designed to track you on your windshield, and instead of paying automatically use coins. It's impossible to be anonymous when you have a transmitter with a unique id stuck to your car.
If you really want to be anonymous walk to work, preferably with a bag over your head.
Why in the world would I want my software vendor to have high revenues? The reason that Linux vendors have lower profit margins is because there is nothing to stop you from switching vendors if they gouge you. Linux is all about lowering the TCO of the solution, and a big chunk of that lower TCO comes from getting Microsoft's hand out of your pocket. More and more customers are realizing this and eventually Microsoft is going to have no choice but to try and compete with the lower prices.
The good news is that sales are up, especially for "client" computers.
The real danger to Microsoft isn't Linux's ability to generate profits, the real danger is Linux's ability to commoditize software. Eventually Microsoft's customers are going to learn that they can get more for less.
Spot on. All the NVidia performance in the world doesn't do me a darn bit of good without a Free Software driver. Sure, I can buy an NVidia card and hope they keep supporting their closed source driver, but I would much rather purchase hardware that came with a Free Software driver (even if the hardware isn't quite as spiffy). The fact that the card will be cheaper is also a huge bonus.
It is not that Linux networking is really that much harder than Windows networking. In fact, in some ways Linux is probably easier, but only once you get to know how it works. That's one of the major problems that Linux faces. Even in those instances where Linux is better than Windows most folks are already used to doing things the Windows way.
Linuxers certainly want to "refine" Linux, but they don't want to copy Windows warts and all, and so you end up with bits that seem tricky.
In the end you have to balance the cost of training your employees to use Linux against the ongoing costs of paying for Windows (and upgrading your employees' Windows skills). I know that for me the switch has been very beneficial, and the cost of relearning was definitely worth it, but Linux is still not for everyone.
For example, in my own case the added productivity came about because I now had access to a much more powerful set of tools. Python, bash, make, grep, sed, sort, etc. have allowed me to do some fairly amazing things, and they are available on basically any Linux machine. Sometimes scripts can easily do things that are nearly impossible to do with a GUI.
For a far more entertaining perspective watch some Red Dwarf on TV (or read the excellent books Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life). Pay particular attention to the bits about Talkie Toaster, they are hilarious.
Someone will ill intentions towards the US could infiltrate Microsoft just as easily as the PostgreSQL core developers group (to pick a Free Software package at random). The difference is that at Microsoft there are only a limited number of people that might be able to catch the problem, and they might also be "in on the joke." I certainly agree that the government should have their own security experts look over the source code to any package they use. Free Software makes that much easier. Heck, I look forward to the day when some of the CVS servers (or whatever) that I get my source from are .gov domains.
Yes, it is one thing to evangelize Linux when no one has heard of it, but now you almost hope that your competitors use something else.
Actually IBM will happily support your Sun servers.
Yes, I realize that the benchmark was old (both MySQL and PostgreSQL have new versions out since then), but it is still more indicative of the real MySQL vs. PostgreSQL benchmarks than the MySQL benchmarks up on mysql.com.
And yes, I realize that the InnoDB tables have row level locking and transaction support. I never said that MySQL was bad, in fact, it is getting quite good. I just have a fundamental problem with the "benchmarketing" that the MySQL folks have been using for years. There is a world of difference between their benchmarks and how you use a database in real life.
My question for you is have you taken a look at the newer versions of PostgreSQL and seen how they react under the types of loads you put MySQL under? My guess is that you would find that PostgreSQL also performs very well, and you don't have to put up with MySQL's shortcomings. Crashing a PostgreSQL box, for example, is quite a bit less painful.
I used to hear that sort of FUD all of the time. Mostly from people who had spent a great deal of time and money getting certified in some other vendor's software. Linux and Free Software are dangerous to these people because they seriously impact the value of these people's skills. If more and more businesses and organizations start using Free Software, then there will be less demand for their particular skillset.
Many of the points that the GAO guy brought up are simply not true, and all of them should be taken with a huge grain of salt. There haven't been any "massive security" issues with Linux (although the same can't be said for some other PC based server operating systems written in Redmond), and there haven't been any major reliability problems either. In fact, anecdotal evidence shows that Linux is more secure and more reliable than its commercial competitors. As for commercial support, I have been using Linux since 1994, and there has always been someone you could call for support (granted, they were probably fairly small). Nowadays you can contract support from IBM or HP, which should be support enough for just about anyone. And if he thinks that Free Software is "haphazard" he should see what passes for development in some closed source commercial companies. Borland's Interbase apparently has had a backdoor password for years that wasn't found until the source was opened, and some versions of Excell shipped with a full blown flight simulator included. You can put anything in a commercial software product without anyone being the wiser. The last point is especially weak. The GPL, arguably the most restrictive Free Software license, doesn't even attempt to control how you use the software. You don't have to pay one bit of attention to the GPL unless you distribute software based on GPLed source. Most commercial software EULA's on the other hand have all sorts of end user stipulations. In other words there are no "licensing issues" and you certainly wouldn't have to put your lab results into the public domain.
This particular brand of FUD hasn't worked particularly well against Linux because so many folks have used Linux successfully. Linux's low price also makes it easy to run your own tests. Linux has simply become too popular to ignore these days. There are simply too many happy Linux users to overlook the chance to get good software at a very low price.
The so-called MySQL benchmark compares MySQL and other databases doing a whole pile of somewhat obscure database functions one at a time. If your database only has one user, and you spend a lot of time truncating tables, then MySQL is probably the correct choice. For a much more realistic benchmark try here. After looking at MySQL's benchmarks I had to conclude that either the MySQL developers are ridiculously naive about real world data loads or that they are being deliberately deceitful. No one cares how a database performs when there is one single user.
MySQL is a fine database if your are creating an appliation that is read intensive and that doesn't need any of PostgreSQL's more advanced features.
Your post was certainly on topic, but the real issue still isn't GE foods. That's just a convenient excuse that the Africans know the European public will buy. The real reasons for rejecting aid is almost always political. Some despot wants the folks that are starving to death to die, and he doesn't want foreign intervention.
Don't be so gullible. It isn't about patents or about the European grain market. Those in power in Zimbabwe are using famine as a weapon of mass destruction. You can bet that their supporters will have plenty to eat, but their opponents will not. If the people starving were able to receive aid then the government would have to spend money to kill them.
Microsoft didn't seem like too bad a taskmaster compared to IBM. After all, at least the hardware was open. All of a sudden there were all sorts of companies that were happy to sell you compantible DOS based machines. Now the software is slowly becoming a commodity as well, and Microsoft will suffer the same way that IBM suffered when hardware became a commodity.
It's all economics, and quite inevitable.
The problem is that, so far anyway, the Free Software community hasn't given a fig for Java. They are perfectly happy with tools like Python and Zope, and Perl, and plain old C.
Free Software hackers have a lot of experience chasing someone else's specification, and for the most part it has turned out to be much harder than simply creating your own software from scratch. The canonical example is Motif. Lesstif was in development for years before it was even halfway useful. GTK, on the other hand, sprang into existence relatively quickly. Likewise Kaffe has been somewhat useful for years, without being something you would be able to use in production. Recently it would appear that they have completely given up chasing the new Sun specifications.
It's Sun's ball game to win or lose in this particular case, but Sun needs the Free Software community if they plan on beating .NET. Rest assured Sun isn't going to win over the Free Software hackers unless they release the code to their JVM. At the very least they need to release some specifications like Microsoft has done. Heck, there are quite a few hackers that are looking seriously at Mono, for crying out loud. Java hasn't done well in the Free Software world to this point, and it is likely to do much worse if a Free Software variant of .NET emerges.
If Microsoft developers and Free Software developers both end up developing .NET applications Java will go the way of the dodo.
My point is that by not investing at all you are cutting off your nose to spite your face (as my Grandma always says). Sure, some stocks might have lost a third of their value, but chances are that most of that value was hype anyhow. The trick is to stick to basics, dividends, low P/E rations, etc. Worst comes to worse you could simply invest in broad-based index funds like the S&P 500. These types of investments are not going to get the high flying returns that draw speculators, they will encourage honest businesses, and they will be more rewarding than simply putting your money in a bank (in the long run anyhow).
Hold up there cowboy. Investing in the future is still a smart thing to do, and the stock market has historically been the best performer around. There are still plenty of companies with management that have their eye focused on the ball. It just takes a little extra work investing in these sorts of companies.
The stock market is like anything else, if it seems like the deal is too good to be true, then it probably is. If you keep that in mind and invest for long term performance then you will be much better off in the market then in a bank account.
You are certainly correct about Microsoft delivering on time and with more than most folks bargained for. .NET was more or less precisely what Microsoft promised, and it was delivered in a very timely manner. However, the reason that it isn't selling doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it has a poor slogan. The reason that .NET hasn't gained much traction is that it A) requires Microsoft's largest developer community (VB programmers) to completely rethink and rewrite their code, probably in another language and B) they marketed .NET in such a way that the cool bits were marketed alongside several bits that were not cool and that no one was interested in (Hailstorm).
Yes, I know that it is possible to connect to legacy code via COM, and I realize that you can create web services without Hailstorm or Passport, but that certainly isn't the message that Microsoft has been preaching. Whenever folks complained about all the changes to VB all Microsoft could do was point out how cool C# was. Whenever Microsoft talked about web services they tripped all over themselves explaining how for thousands of dollars a year websites could access the information that Microsoft was gathering on their Passport users.
Needless to say neither of these messages were what consumers and developers wanted to hear.
So don't blame .NET's lackluster sales on complexity, but instead put the blame where it belongs. Microsoft has been painting a picture that makes them happy instead of one that makes their customers happy.
No, the CEO has a legal responsibility to maximize the profitability of the enterprise, the stock price is only tangential to the real issue. All of the companies that are currently involved in scandals were far more concerned with hype than with making real profits, and the reason behind this was simple. The management was being rewarded for hyping up the stock and not for the actual performance of the company.
Stock options dilute the value of the shares held by investors and then cause the management to spend more time worrying about the stock price than the actual financial status of the company. After all, why should the CEO of WorldCom care that WorldCom is going bankrupt if he has just made a quadzillion dollars in stock options.
I still believe that stock options are a powerful incentive, but they should be counted as expenses (because that is what they really are) to keep companies from abusing the policy.
Everyone has the right to give up their privacy in exchange for preferential treatment. If some schmoe doesn't mind that [insert supermarket] is tracking their buying habits, then why should you get upset about it. If you don't like discount cards, don't use one.
It would be entirely different if the Federal government mandated that we all use such cards and then required all stores to share their information with the FBI.
Exactly. Since most of these CEOs derived a substantial portion of their income from stock options it was in their best interest to downplay reality. Instead of managing the company for longterm growth and prosperity they settled for managing the stock price into the stratosphere.
All the more reason to pay your management with money, and not with stock options. If you do want to pay your management with stock options you should at least count that as an expense.
TCO for Linux might be too high if you plan on putting a PC on everyone's desk, but if you roll out Linux desktops intelligently (ie. using thin clients) then TCO is far lower than Windows, even including retraining costs. You see, the beauty of Linux is that, for the first time in recorded history there is a fairly comprehensive set of applications that can be served up via X11. One commodity Linux box (provided it has enough memory) can easily handle hundreds of X terminals. So instead of hundreds of PCs to babysit you would be left with one server per hundred users (or so). Backups, software upgrades, account changes, client configuration, etc. all become trivial matters when you are only dealing with one machine. Likewise upgrading the clients becomes far more economical.
Yes, there are some niggly little client details that require some work, but it is definitely possible to set up Linux clients that are functional and userfriendly, and the cost savings in hardware and software (and especially staffing) can be enormous. It's even possible to use Citrix to use "legacy" software during the changeover.
The lawsuit has little or nothing to do with it. The real problem is that Microsoft, in a desperate attempt to keep their revenues up, has become even more anti-consumer than ever. Instead of giving the consumer what he or she wants Microsoft is spending more and more of its time and efforts on initiatives that actually hurt their users. Microsoft's users did not ask for the new licensing schemes, the new anti-piracy code, built in DRM software, and a whole host of other annoying features.
Think about it for a moment. Windows XP is essentially Windows 2000 with some anti-piracy measures. While Apple is busy advertising how easy it is to create MP3s with a Macintosh Microsoft is busy trying to replace MP3s with something that the music industry could control. For most of Microsoft's customers Windows XP is less useful than the previous version.
This isn't really anything new. Microsoft has historically used all sorts of tricks to force their customers along the upgrade path. The difference is that in the past Microsoft could afford to act this way because they were the only game in town, but that isn't necessarily the case any more. Everyone else was vastly more expensive. Nowadays, however, there are affordable alternatives.