The U.S. government has had a clue in that area for a while. Last August, the FTC slapped Microsoft for false advertisement. Maybe it is a coincidence that around that time, Microsoft stopped pitching MS-Passport so noisily and push it steaily without fanfare. Among other things the FTC charged that MS-Passport
fails to employ reasonable and appropriate measures to protect privacy and confidentiality
fails to provide better security than your run-of-the-mill online transaction
collected personally identifiable sign-on history, contrary to claims in its privacy policy
That was an easy call, MS-Passport cannot be made secure even in theory, but it's reassuring that the FTC is more up to speed than the PTO.
In regards to single-signon there is probably a lot that can be done with certificates and or keys to estabilish a consistent online identity, but with a minimum of personal data. The personal data, if needed at all, has no need to be kept together with the keys.
Corporations have now gotten to the point where they must be obliged to respect the Bill of Rights and other legislation just as governments. They [proven] risk and damage from abuse is just to harmful otherwise.
So now they're only overcharging 3.65 times the free martket price instead of 5.
The monopoly rents for MS-Office and MS-Windows have been about 5 times the free market price.
So they came down 27% for Taiwan. So? 73% of 5 is 3.65.
When it gets down to close to 1, then it would be news. Otherwise, it's just a PR move. It could be interesting if it indicates the cutoff point at which Office and Windows start to turn a loss.
Will maintenance costs associated with the viruses, worms and other security problems provided by MS-Office and MS-Windows also be counted in the figure? OpenOffice is free, plus no worms. StarOffice costs, but you get support, plus no worms.
More to the point -- what are they supposed when someone sends them.doc files?
This is precisely why focus needs to turn to the file formats rather than the applications.
If the file format is open and well-documented then it shouldn't matter which application users choose to run - they can choose what works best for them in regards to performace, ease of use, security and such.
.DOC files, even if they are MS-Word, are the very example of interoperability problems. There is no MS-Word format, but instead a whole suite of related, yet incompatible formats (please point out my mistakes, this is from memory):
DOS
2,3,4&5.x
Macintosh
2,3,4,5,6, 98, XP
Windows
2.x, 6.x,7.x, 97, 2000, XP
Converting between these, you will lose something depending on the version. I've lost language, styles, metadata at different times. Unfortunately the loss was not always apparent at the time of migration.
Just sticking with the DOS/Windows examples above, that's 9 different formats in less than 15 years, an average of 0.6 per year. To put it in English, a new format is put out more frequently than every two years.
Lack of forward compatibility between the file formats used by these applications has been used consistently to drive upgrades of office packages, operating systems and hardware, all of which cause strain with retraining and budgets.
Heads up on the changes planned in for MS-Office 2003, especially the DRM, they look to cause extreme difficulty.
For most people, security is not important. Top performance is not important. Optimum configuration is not important. Control is not important. Not having to power toggle is not important.
Being able to put the CD in the CD drive, press a button a couple of times, reboot, and get what you want is VERY IMPORTANT. NOT THINKING is VERY IMPORTANT.
You forgot laziness. That's why most people will see if they can get what they want without addressing security, performance or configuration. That's also the reason I dropped MS products, even at home. Linux was getting easier to use, install and maintain. MS-Windows was getting harder and more trouble-prone. One week I realized that they'd crossed and migrated the home network minus one to Linux. Windows kept getting harder to maintain, patches broke things, and keeping a Windows machine just wasn't worth the effort.
Last summer, I started running OS X.. That hits the nail on the head -- secure, powerful and flexible yet you don't need to think and you don't need to work to add/remove functionality or maintain it. Far easier than anything else, plus I can keep a mix like Photoshop, Filemaker, Emacs, MySQL, etc.
Sorry to get your knickers in a twist. I'll skip to the main point of your flame:
The US has a FOI act [my emphasis] just like most civilized countries.
For democracies and representative democracies it's kind of hard to have a civilized country without informed decisions. You cannot have an informed decision without unfettered access to information. Thus freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of modern democracies.
The U.S. has an Act. Sweden and Finland do not have a freedom of information act, nor a law, nor a contitutional amendment. It is a full-blown article in the constitution regarding freedom of information. Nor was it added yesterday, it's been there since 1766, ten years before the U.S. was formed
More importantly, it is (currently) well implemented and serves as a good model for other countries to follow. Case in point. Question: Upon joining the E.U., who did the Brits turn to in order get public E.U. documents? Answer: Sweden.
Lastly, this has everything to do with blocking government records -- every U.S. administration since Reagan has gone to great efforts to try to be allowed to erase electronic records, such as e-mail. So, in addition to what other posters have mentioned about DRM being a facillitator of corporate and political abuse, it is a rather direct threat to freedom and democratic process. And, uh, freedom and democratic process == good, right?
Within limits, government records in Sweden have been open to the public by default since 1766. It's part of the constitution. Had the E.U. had such safeguards, millions (billions?) of EUR would have been saved by avoiding the pay scandals a few years ago.
The U.S. could use it as well. Strangely, the situation leading into the adoption of Offentlighetsprincipen bears some semblance to the current situation in the U.S. One party took power, blocked access to government records to political opponentds and started a war. It took decades to sort out, but the result was modifying the constitution. Few countries come close on freedom of information and, as a side effect, on the freedom of press index.
At one student job, we used to do some data recovery on the side. I used to encourage people to keep at least one back up even for small things.
Many protested against the need for a backup, often countering with, "no need, I've used this disk [in my front pocket|loose in my backpack|in my sandwich bag] nearly every day for three years and it has never lost a file"
We used to get lots of people who lost papers, short assignments and occasionally a term paper or article. We even recovered a few theses. However, we never encountered someone that lost a dissertation. I always figured that those that did, just jumped of a roof or something.
If Microsoft is not just trying to force sales of MS-Windows Server 2003, then it looks like it's choosing MS-Office instead of MS-Windows to lay the groundwork for Palladium. If they tried to put it into MS-Windows first, people would finish migrating to another OS.
Right now many are less aware or concerned about the issue of proprietary data formats than they are over OSes. Another key is that MS-Office (for the time being) has even a higher market penetration than MS-Windows.
It extends Microsoft's MS-Windows monopoly by requiring at least one Serer 2003 at each site. It also has the potential to lock out non-Windows or End-of-Life'd MS-Windows distros:
A user's computer must be able to access the Windows Server 2003 running RMS on first opening a document to authenticate the rights and decrypt the document. Otherwise, the document cannot be opened.
If that wasn't clear enough, it has the potential to lock out competitors and End-of-Life'd MS-Windows distros:
the operating systems must use XrML (Extensible Rights Markup Language) in the same way Microsoft does...Otherwise, the document could not be opened on the non-Windows operating system.
Palladium can be used to determine which hardware is allowed access:
In the future, Microsoft plans to replace the underlying "platform" with the forthcoming security technology formerly known as Palladium," Nash said. RMS is solely a software technology, whereas Palladium will add hardware security chips as an additional protection and rights management mechanism.
In short it's about control -- this would give the last bit of control of data away, out of the hands of users / businesses.
This is not just a U.S. problem. It is also an issue for non-US companies, governments and agencies. Once 100% control over the data is given away, then both hardware and software budgets are effectively determined by outsiders. Access to data would be controlled by outsiders as well -- who is to say that there isn't a backdoor
or that product activation wouldn't be used to "blockade" the data of an agency or competing company.
This looks like it might be the beginning of a FUD storm in March. Several products and policies are going into effect, not to mention the first year of License 6 is soon out. A speculation about the goal of the misinformtion campaign / FUD storm would be that it's goal is to take focus off of Microsoft's new DRM policies, pricing problems with License 6, security problems (and plenty), avoidance of interoperable file formats and seemingly terminally ill financial prognosis. Few CTOs are going to be willing to be caught with their mouths open in regards to the new pricing, licensing, and DRM. However, enough smoke and confusion may allow more time to dump options before things get harder.
At the same time, many are finding that in many cases they don't need MS-Windows any more even on the desktop. OS X and even some of the major Linux distributions are turning out to be more efficient and cost effective choices for some on the desktop. StarOffice and OpenOffice have made such advances that unless one really likes the security problems and incompatible file formats of MS-Office there's no reason not to migrate.
Yes, technically, MS-Word can save in RTF. However, in practice, you get quite a few warning messages. The first ones will scare non-technical users into saving in MS-Word's latest format. The last few are actually confusing and you have to experiment a few times to find out "Do you want to save your changes?" means "Do you want to overwrite RTF with the lastest MS-Word format?"
Nothing's so good...that it justifies this: "To use threedegrees, prospective testers must be running Windows XP with Service Pack 1, the new peer-to-peer update and MSN Messenger 5 installed on their computer."
No, but many gullible users will install them regardless just to test MS-threedegrees and then forget or be unable/unmotivated to uninstall the cruft.
The main reasons to switch from Wintel to Macintosh are price/performance, availability of software, ease of interoperability, etc.
For price/performance, check the current prices you'll see that the Apple hardware is now cheaper than Wintel stuff of comparable quality and performance.
Availability of software is another reason, especially because OS X gives you both the regular desktop tools (Photoshop, Quark, etc.) as well as the regualr UNIX tools.
Apple rules Ease of use, hands down. You get the Apple GUI and, if you need it, the power and flexibility of scriptable command lines such as Bash.
Apple also seems to rule interoperability, being able to connect easily to wireless networks, LANs, and various Macintosh, Windows and Unix machines.
For laptops, they seem to have everyone beat with battery life, good large screens and low weight.
Value-conscious purchases are likely to result in choosing Apple, though I would not be surprised if many let ideology cloud their decisions and shell out more money for Bill.
Actually, this is a very good point. If the datafiles can be read, written and displayed perfectly by any number of applications then the users, the government in this case, are free to choose the one that suits their needs. As mentioned before, OASIS is working to standardize file formats.
If data formats are open and well-documented, then users are also free to migrate to other applications as either applications or needs change. Unfortunately, Microsoft has already stated a public position against such open formats. Presumably because, no matter how it is done, it will cut the legs from under the existing revenue model for MS-Office.
It's not as altruistic as it seems. Most of the money goes to pharmaceuticals, just like the AIDS budget announced by Bush, which gives half to pharmaceuticals. Coincidentally, Bill Gates bought a fair amount of stock in drug companies last year.
At least in India, smoke from wood fires is more of a health concern than AIDS. In Eastern Europe it's mult-drug resistant tuberculosis. (If you travel with peope working in Eastern Europe/Russia or work indoors with anyone who does, then this should be a higher prioirity than AIDS) In the U.S. it's traffic deaths.
divisions: Client, Server Platform, and Information Worker.
Yes, and if you roll further down in the SEC reports, you'll see that this really does translate to Windows and Office. Regardless, you'll find that these are only profitable due to monopoly rents. Everything else, like MSN, SQL Server, xbox runs a loss. As the install base shrinks, revenues will shrink geometrically.
It's not really surprising that there are so many Microsoft shills posting, it takes attention away from other monkey business, like fulfilling punishment for breach of contract with Sun over Java. What is surprising is that any and all pro-Microsoft posts are getting +5 these days.
Most people take what is offered in the stores. The key factor in what to purchase is determined by what is on sale that month. The OEM determines what OS comes pre-installed on the machines that are on sale. Once OEMs are no longer forced to bundle Windows, it and the monopoly-rent-inflated revenues will dry up and blow away.
Most of the rest of the people couldn't give a rat's ass what OS is on their computer as long as it works. Now that Macintoshes are both a good deal and affordable, OS X will be popular in that group.
However, StarOffice and OpenOffice run on MS-Windows, OS X, Linux and others -- without the bloat, security problems and incompatibility problems bundled with MS-Office.
Even without all that above, License 6.0, software-as-subscription, DRM and DMCA pretty much ensured the demise of MS-Office.
Microsoft's had, and blown, many chances. The industry concedes that Microsoft's security initiative is a failure, consisting of spin not action. Last week's MSTD is not just an example of poor design. Nor is it a result of admins not doing a good job or not keeping up to date. The various Microsoft service packs, upgrades and patches are so infamous for opening new holes, breaking thrid party apps, and not fixing the problems that they purport to fix that even Microsoft didn't apply them.
The security push marketed by Chairman Bill and co. seems to have little or nothing to do with security and is perhaps only a smoke screen to distract from lobbying efforts, other security privacy and false advertising problems, or losses on various fronts. Alternately, the security rhetoric could be a simple case of "pump-n-dump" as options are offloaded to chumps.
Seriously, that company has such a long and poor track record on all fronts, except marketing, that it is not a viable alternative to consider for servers or embedded systems where *BSD, Linux, QNX, Solaris, and others are best practice. Similarly, the desktop market is looking for security, stability, ease of use, ease of maintenance areas where Microsoft is far behind OS X and the major Linux distros.
They had their chance, in fact many. For a dot-com, they've had a long run, but now the best thing they could do for the economy and for the Internet would be to get out of the way.
OASIS is working on a standard format for producivity packages. OpenOffice/StarOffice look to be the main beneficiaries, but since the standard will be open, you can write your own wordprocessors or spreadsheets to read/write/edit these files.
As mentioned in other posts, if the file format had been open and documented there would not really be an issue. However, since legacy formats are starting to punish businesses with real costs, the issue can no longer be ignored, even by those that don't/can't plan ahead.
DMCA and EUCD are two additional reasons for migrating from legacy formats. These two could legally prevent businesses (and agencies) from accessing their own documents if encoded in undocumented, proprietary formats and the tools to manage these formats are no longer licensed.
If they can work towards an open file format system to replace MS office, they could chip away @ the MS desktop market.
Chip, yes, but it MS-Office revenue will collapse like a sand castle when it goes -- but that's a separate thread. Since Microsoft has alrady taken a publicly stated position against the open file formats, the collapse will only reduce the overhead costs of businesses, agencies and citizens.
Actually the largest fearmongers are commercial advertisers. Advertisements almost never target rationality, facts, or logic. Instead they nearly always appeal to base emotions, especially fear. so while you forbrain is hearing the message, "healthy|safer|attractive", your hindbrain is hearing "fear|fear|fear".
One person becoming mildly anxious, neurotic, or agressive because of overstimulation of the biological response to fear is no big deal. It takes on more significance in proportion to the size of the population affected.
Ooop. Except that Microsoft don't make either openoffice or Mono. You don't think that it might be a method of removing vendor lock in?
No. OpenOffice can exist without the good will of any particular company. Mono, howver, gives every appearance of being dependent on continued use of patents from a company not known for helping competitors. I expect they'll try to pull similar tricks as were done with Sendo, HTML, Kerberos, LDAP, or Java.
They say this as if it's negative for Microsoft...
Mono seems to be Microsoft's best, perhaps only, chance for implementing.Net. Unfortunately, I'm very skeptical to it and see it only as a way of porting vendor lock in to new platforms in place of Windows, which seems to be on the decline. Once OEMs are no longer forced to push Windows on each and every machine, the monopoly position that Microsoft enjoys will rapidly fade and with it, the monopoly rents which seem to be Microsoft's only source of money.
Unfortunately that probability will exist until the issue of encumbering patents is resolved. So far there are just vague rumors of oral promises not to use submarine patents to the disadvantage of non-MS tools. Look at the disruption caused by Unisys's LZW patent used in GIFs. Look at Sendo to see how Mono will get treated if Bill G is done with it.
Australia is pro-U.S. because most of the old-timers, those in or heading into retirement, remember that the U.S. more or less prevented Australia from becoming Japanese. The Brits had used the Australian and New Zealanders for cannon fodder and there were only enough left to post one soldier every few miles on a line down the center of the continent. The U.S. also put pressure on Indonesia to cease annexation of PNG (and probably Australia eventually). However, those are past deeds and not good for credit in the current generation.
The rest of Europe and Russia bitch because they aren't that important anymore. The world no longer spins around France, Germany and Russia. They are being pushed to the sidelines. Hell, they did it and now it is someone else's turn.
If these various DMCA-like laws keep popping up, then the world will stop revolving around the U.S. and it will be yet someone else's turn. Especially if a war is used to address the next set of quarterly financial reports. Russia is out - collapsed economically and out of control, which is why Putin kisses up. Britain is out. But Germany stands a good chance or, in a few years time if luck holds out for India, maybe even India.
What I hear from most people is, "how much does it cost?" The decision of what to purchase is determined by what is on sale that month. The OEM determines what OS comes pre-installed on the machines that are on sale.
The reason MS-Windows is still common is because it has been fscking difficult to buy a cheap (Intel) computer without it. In other words, OEMs determine consumer usage. C'mon, weren't you awake during the antitrust trial? Microsoft fights tooth and nail to keep their OEM agreements under wraps. They couldn't have achieved monopoly rents on their products without holding the OEMs.
Myself, I found that MS-Windows could not do the things I needed to do for work and the things I wanted to do for fun. When I found that Linux was much easier to install (if you have MS-Windows, you will re-install at least 3x per year) and maintain than Windows, I dropped it from the last of my machines, even though it was pre-installed, and migrated fully to Linux.
Last year, I upgraded to a PowerBook, intending to stick with Linux, but found that OS X was so good with both productivity apps and devel tools that I've kept it.
So in the end, even in my case, the OEM influence the system I used.
Slashdot Mirror
- fails to employ reasonable and appropriate measures to protect privacy and confidentiality
- fails to provide better security than your run-of-the-mill online transaction
- collected personally identifiable sign-on history, contrary to claims in its privacy policy
That was an easy call, MS-Passport cannot be made secure even in theory, but it's reassuring that the FTC is more up to speed than the PTO.In regards to single-signon there is probably a lot that can be done with certificates and or keys to estabilish a consistent online identity, but with a minimum of personal data. The personal data, if needed at all, has no need to be kept together with the keys.
Corporations have now gotten to the point where they must be obliged to respect the Bill of Rights and other legislation just as governments. They [proven] risk and damage from abuse is just to harmful otherwise.
The monopoly rents for MS-Office and MS-Windows have been about 5 times the free market price. So they came down 27% for Taiwan. So? 73% of 5 is 3.65.
When it gets down to close to 1, then it would be news. Otherwise, it's just a PR move. It could be interesting if it indicates the cutoff point at which Office and Windows start to turn a loss.
Will maintenance costs associated with the viruses, worms and other security problems provided by MS-Office and MS-Windows also be counted in the figure? OpenOffice is free, plus no worms. StarOffice costs, but you get support, plus no worms.
If the file format is open and well-documented then it shouldn't matter which application users choose to run - they can choose what works best for them in regards to performace, ease of use, security and such.
- DOS
- 2,3,4&5.x
- Macintosh
- 2,3,4,5,6, 98, XP
- Windows
- 2.x, 6.x,7.x, 97, 2000, XP
Converting between these, you will lose something depending on the version. I've lost language, styles, metadata at different times. Unfortunately the loss was not always apparent at the time of migration.Just sticking with the DOS/Windows examples above, that's 9 different formats in less than 15 years, an average of 0.6 per year. To put it in English, a new format is put out more frequently than every two years. Lack of forward compatibility between the file formats used by these applications has been used consistently to drive upgrades of office packages, operating systems and hardware, all of which cause strain with retraining and budgets.
Heads up on the changes planned in for MS-Office 2003, especially the DRM, they look to cause extreme difficulty.
Last summer, I started running OS X.. That hits the nail on the head -- secure, powerful and flexible yet you don't need to think and you don't need to work to add/remove functionality or maintain it. Far easier than anything else, plus I can keep a mix like Photoshop, Filemaker, Emacs, MySQL, etc.
Blood Music is another.
The US has a FOI act [my emphasis] just like most civilized countries.
For democracies and representative democracies it's kind of hard to have a civilized country without informed decisions. You cannot have an informed decision without unfettered access to information. Thus freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of modern democracies.
The U.S. has an Act. Sweden and Finland do not have a freedom of information act, nor a law, nor a contitutional amendment. It is a full-blown article in the constitution regarding freedom of information. Nor was it added yesterday, it's been there since 1766, ten years before the U.S. was formed
More importantly, it is (currently) well implemented and serves as a good model for other countries to follow. Case in point. Question: Upon joining the E.U., who did the Brits turn to in order get public E.U. documents? Answer: Sweden.
Lastly, this has everything to do with blocking government records -- every U.S. administration since Reagan has gone to great efforts to try to be allowed to erase electronic records, such as e-mail. So, in addition to what other posters have mentioned about DRM being a facillitator of corporate and political abuse, it is a rather direct threat to freedom and democratic process. And, uh, freedom and democratic process == good, right?
Within limits, government records in Sweden have been open to the public by default since 1766. It's part of the constitution. Had the E.U. had such safeguards, millions (billions?) of EUR would have been saved by avoiding the pay scandals a few years ago.
The U.S. could use it as well. Strangely, the situation leading into the adoption of Offentlighetsprincipen bears some semblance to the current situation in the U.S. One party took power, blocked access to government records to political opponentds and started a war. It took decades to sort out, but the result was modifying the constitution. Few countries come close on freedom of information and, as a side effect, on the freedom of press index.
</Gratuituous plug for Open Government>
We used to get lots of people who lost papers, short assignments and occasionally a term paper or article. We even recovered a few theses. However, we never encountered someone that lost a dissertation. I always figured that those that did, just jumped of a roof or something.
Right now many are less aware or concerned about the issue of proprietary data formats than they are over OSes. Another key is that MS-Office (for the time being) has even a higher market penetration than MS-Windows.
It extends Microsoft's MS-Windows monopoly by requiring at least one Serer 2003 at each site. It also has the potential to lock out non-Windows or End-of-Life'd MS-Windows distros:
If that wasn't clear enough, it has the potential to lock out competitors and End-of-Life'd MS-Windows distros: Palladium can be used to determine which hardware is allowed access:In short it's about control -- this would give the last bit of control of data away, out of the hands of users / businesses. This is not just a U.S. problem. It is also an issue for non-US companies, governments and agencies. Once 100% control over the data is given away, then both hardware and software budgets are effectively determined by outsiders. Access to data would be controlled by outsiders as well -- who is to say that there isn't a backdoor or that product activation wouldn't be used to "blockade" the data of an agency or competing company.
At the same time, many are finding that in many cases they don't need MS-Windows any more even on the desktop. OS X and even some of the major Linux distributions are turning out to be more efficient and cost effective choices for some on the desktop. StarOffice and OpenOffice have made such advances that unless one really likes the security problems and incompatible file formats of MS-Office there's no reason not to migrate.
Yes, technically, MS-Word can save in RTF. However, in practice, you get quite a few warning messages. The first ones will scare non-technical users into saving in MS-Word's latest format. The last few are actually confusing and you have to experiment a few times to find out "Do you want to save your changes?" means "Do you want to overwrite RTF with the lastest MS-Word format?"
- For price/performance, check the current prices you'll see that the Apple hardware is now cheaper than Wintel stuff of comparable quality and performance.
- Availability of software is another reason, especially because OS X gives you both the regular desktop tools (Photoshop, Quark, etc.) as well as the regualr UNIX tools.
- Apple rules Ease of use, hands down. You get the Apple GUI and, if you need it, the power and flexibility of scriptable command lines such as Bash.
- Apple also seems to rule interoperability, being able to connect easily to wireless networks, LANs, and various Macintosh, Windows and Unix machines.
- For laptops, they seem to have everyone beat with battery life, good large screens and low weight.
Value-conscious purchases are likely to result in choosing Apple, though I would not be surprised if many let ideology cloud their decisions and shell out more money for Bill.If data formats are open and well-documented, then users are also free to migrate to other applications as either applications or needs change. Unfortunately, Microsoft has already stated a public position against such open formats. Presumably because, no matter how it is done, it will cut the legs from under the existing revenue model for MS-Office.
It's not as altruistic as it seems. Most of the money goes to pharmaceuticals, just like the AIDS budget announced by Bush, which gives half to pharmaceuticals. Coincidentally, Bill Gates bought a fair amount of stock in drug companies last year.
At least in India, smoke from wood fires is more of a health concern than AIDS. In Eastern Europe it's mult-drug resistant tuberculosis. (If you travel with peope working in Eastern Europe/Russia or work indoors with anyone who does, then this should be a higher prioirity than AIDS) In the U.S. it's traffic deaths.
Yes, and if you roll further down in the SEC reports, you'll see that this really does translate to Windows and Office. Regardless, you'll find that these are only profitable due to monopoly rents. Everything else, like MSN, SQL Server, xbox runs a loss. As the install base shrinks, revenues will shrink geometrically.
It's not really surprising that there are so many Microsoft shills posting, it takes attention away from other monkey business, like fulfilling punishment for breach of contract with Sun over Java. What is surprising is that any and all pro-Microsoft posts are getting +5 these days.
Most of the rest of the people couldn't give a rat's ass what OS is on their computer as long as it works. Now that Macintoshes are both a good deal and affordable, OS X will be popular in that group.
However, StarOffice and OpenOffice run on MS-Windows, OS X, Linux and others -- without the bloat, security problems and incompatibility problems bundled with MS-Office.
Even without all that above, License 6.0, software-as-subscription, DRM and DMCA pretty much ensured the demise of MS-Office.
The security push marketed by Chairman Bill and co. seems to have little or nothing to do with security and is perhaps only a smoke screen to distract from lobbying efforts, other security privacy and false advertising problems, or losses on various fronts. Alternately, the security rhetoric could be a simple case of "pump-n-dump" as options are offloaded to chumps.
Seriously, that company has such a long and poor track record on all fronts, except marketing, that it is not a viable alternative to consider for servers or embedded systems where *BSD, Linux, QNX, Solaris, and others are best practice. Similarly, the desktop market is looking for security, stability, ease of use, ease of maintenance areas where Microsoft is far behind OS X and the major Linux distros.
They had their chance, in fact many. For a dot-com, they've had a long run, but now the best thing they could do for the economy and for the Internet would be to get out of the way.
As mentioned in other posts, if the file format had been open and documented there would not really be an issue. However, since legacy formats are starting to punish businesses with real costs, the issue can no longer be ignored, even by those that don't/can't plan ahead.
DMCA and EUCD are two additional reasons for migrating from legacy formats. These two could legally prevent businesses (and agencies) from accessing their own documents if encoded in undocumented, proprietary formats and the tools to manage these formats are no longer licensed.
Chip, yes, but it MS-Office revenue will collapse like a sand castle when it goes -- but that's a separate thread. Since Microsoft has alrady taken a publicly stated position against the open file formats, the collapse will only reduce the overhead costs of businesses, agencies and citizens.Actually the largest fearmongers are commercial advertisers. Advertisements almost never target rationality, facts, or logic. Instead they nearly always appeal to base emotions, especially fear. so while you forbrain is hearing the message, "healthy|safer|attractive", your hindbrain is hearing "fear|fear|fear".
One person becoming mildly anxious, neurotic, or agressive because of overstimulation of the biological response to fear is no big deal. It takes on more significance in proportion to the size of the population affected.
Perhaps there are other things from Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle that are re-experiencing a renaissance.
Ooop. Except that Microsoft don't make either openoffice or Mono. You don't think that it might be a method of removing vendor lock in?
No. OpenOffice can exist without the good will of any particular company. Mono, howver, gives every appearance of being dependent on continued use of patents from a company not known for helping competitors. I expect they'll try to pull similar tricks as were done with Sendo, HTML, Kerberos, LDAP, or Java.They say this as if it's negative for Microsoft...
Mono seems to be Microsoft's best, perhaps only, chance for implementingUnfortunately that probability will exist until the issue of encumbering patents is resolved. So far there are just vague rumors of oral promises not to use submarine patents to the disadvantage of non-MS tools. Look at the disruption caused by Unisys's LZW patent used in GIFs. Look at Sendo to see how Mono will get treated if Bill G is done with it.
Until then, Java is much further along.
The rest of Europe and Russia bitch because they aren't that important anymore. The world no longer spins around France, Germany and Russia. They are being pushed to the sidelines. Hell, they did it and now it is someone else's turn.
If these various DMCA-like laws keep popping up, then the world will stop revolving around the U.S. and it will be yet someone else's turn. Especially if a war is used to address the next set of quarterly financial reports. Russia is out - collapsed economically and out of control, which is why Putin kisses up. Britain is out. But Germany stands a good chance or, in a few years time if luck holds out for India, maybe even India.The reason MS-Windows is still common is because it has been fscking difficult to buy a cheap (Intel) computer without it. In other words, OEMs determine consumer usage. C'mon, weren't you awake during the antitrust trial? Microsoft fights tooth and nail to keep their OEM agreements under wraps. They couldn't have achieved monopoly rents on their products without holding the OEMs.
Myself, I found that MS-Windows could not do the things I needed to do for work and the things I wanted to do for fun. When I found that Linux was much easier to install (if you have MS-Windows, you will re-install at least 3x per year) and maintain than Windows, I dropped it from the last of my machines, even though it was pre-installed, and migrated fully to Linux.
Last year, I upgraded to a PowerBook, intending to stick with Linux, but found that OS X was so good with both productivity apps and devel tools that I've kept it.
So in the end, even in my case, the OEM influence the system I used.