I actually found it the other way round... Relative to OSX or windows ubuntu was much quicker to get up and running (tested on a dell c610 laptop), compared to windows (xp) on the same box: Ubuntu detected all my hardware, although i had to use the restricted driver management to enable the wireless card and software modem (ubuntu advised me to do this the first time it booted).. windows on the other hand, lacked support for wireless and video, and i had to manually download drivers off the net using the hardwired ethernet. Ubuntu came with a good set of apps, windows didn't, i had to perform manual installations on windows, sometimes involving finding physical media. Ubuntu detected my HP PSC1355 printer/scanner/mediacard as soon as i connected it, and allowed me to access all of it's functions. windows required me to navigate HP's website (which admittedly is better than it used to be) to find drivers which then had to be manually downloaded and installed if i wanted to use the scanner or printer. OSX let me print by default and access the card reader, but i couldn't get HP's scanner drivers to work with leopard.
And there are some services you cannot easily turn off without breaking things... They use router ACLs to drop connections to unused ports, router ACLs cause significant performance hits unless your running really high end kit with hardware firewall service modules. Really, if a port is unused it should be closed, and thus rejected by the target machine.
Also if they're using router ACLs to filter ports, that *is* a firewall, albeit a fairly crude one.
The OEM has a limited choice... 1, Just have IE installed... 2, Have both IE and a newer browser installed...
Number 2 is more work, wastes drive space and creates additional support burden. If they could choose a browser then great, but as it stands theyre forced to include ie wether they want to or not.
People dont buy/install basic windows install media anyway... They typically install a windows "distribution" supplied on a computer by an oem such as dell or hp. Windows should come without a browser, leaving it to the distributor to install a browser of their choice, this is how it used to be and many distributors bundled netscape.
It's the built-in aspect which is the problem... Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install), different linux distributions bundle different browsers and they can always be removed/replaced easily... What windows distributors (ie OEMs) really need is the ability to remove ie completely and replace it with a third party browser, instead of being forced to install the third party browser alongside the buggy outdated one that's built in.
And as for not having a functional browser, there are many many other areas where windows lacks functional apps in comparison to other systems, they don't bundle a functional spreadsheet (or even a facility to view spreadsheets) for instance, nor do they bundle an ssh client/server (everyone else does, and ssh is becoming the standard for remote admin of network devices, replacing telnet), they don't even have a secure erase tool by default and many other shortcomings compared to other systems.
Quite often the mechanism used to change the lights jams, and so lights will be stuck in a fixed position... One direction of traffic gets green, another gets red... See how long it take for people to realise the lights are busted and go anyway.
I know of a few rotaries in/around Boston (Massachusetts) , people seem to have no trouble navigating them... There's a few european-style ones which sit on bridges above highways allowing you to join or leave the highway in either direction.
Blocking trade won't hurt the government, it just hinders the little people and smaller businesses. Some middle men in countries which don't have trade embargoes with either side will get rich by being middle men, buying american goods and selling them to iran at a premium. If this costs the government more, they will just extract more money from their people.
Seeing as they're planning to implement it, perhaps they can provide even greater feedback as to:
a, Whether or not msoffice 2007 actually complies with the published spec. b, What areas of the spec are insufficient to implement the format adequately.
Not very much... But people already go to gyms to exercise, and most gyms have lights, music playing, air conditioning and tv screens... They could offset some of their own electricity costs by hooking up the machines to generation devices and advertise themselves as a "green" gym.
Well yes, reserve prices are stupid and i tend to avoid auctions which set them...
I've been caught out by reserve auctions on ebay... I was the only bidder, which means there was noone else to push the price up to cover the reserve, even tho i was willing to pay that much. Because of that, the item didn't sell. Had they simply set a higher start price, i would quite happily have placed a bid there and won it for that price.
With windows you can only really get proper support from microsoft... If you want windows support, you have one choice. With linux you can get proper support from a large number of big name vendors (ibm, novell, redhat etc) and a lot of smaller ones. You have the choice, and there is competition driving the pricing down.
It's not the fact that linux is free, it's the fact it can be obtained from and supported by multiple sources. Multiple vendors means you can switch if you're not happy with your current vendor, or if another one offers a better deal. And because there's competition and a low barrier to switching, the vendors need to work hard to win your business and keep it, thus giving you a better deal.
I never understood the issue of "not being able to run purchased software"...
There's less need to, a linux distro typically comes with a much larger selection of apps, and a package management tool allowing the automatic download of more. If shops like Walmart are selling linux based systems in their stores, they could start stocking additional linux software to run on them.
What they really need to do is educate users that they don't need to buy additional software, and get everything they need included (or can download additionally for free).
The linux based machines will be perceived as even better value once users realise they get a full set of apps that are costly extras on windows.
Some countries provide this benefit to consumers as well, making electricity cheaper during a specific period (usually late at night)... People set power hungry appliances like water heaters, dishwashers, washing machines etc to come on at these times.
The W3C don't define standards alone, as with many standards bodies the standards are set by users and organisations participating in the process. The standards W3C comes up with are created by a combination of their members (and that includes microsoft) for their mutual benefit, rather than defined by a single player for their own sole benefit. You are also free to join the W3C and play a part in developing future standards, if your ideas provide tangible benefits then they may very well be adopted.
The W3C are not the only standard body either, there is also the likes of Oasis, IANA and ISO although they are less relevant to website authoring.
You mention access to the entire computer, this is a BAD thing from the perspective of the web as a whole. You'd have to be pretty damn sure you trust a website before you'd give it unfettered access to your machine, which is why firefox doesn't provide such access by default. On the other hand, Java apps can have full access to your machine if so granted, as can firefox extensions. However users are obviously encouraged not to blindly trust arbitrary websites. If your tied to a single OS in any case, there's no reason you couldn't provide a firefox plugin/extension to access the hardware you need. This way you could target (and bundle with your apps) the same version of firefox on any version of windows, instead of having to support 2 or more versions of ie. The W3c standards relate to public websites, it is not generally a good idea to give arbitrary websites complete access to your system and thus none of their standards specify ways to do this. However it is possible to do this with java in a cross platform way.
Being dependant on ms is not just bad because they can wipe you out at a moment's notice, it's also bad because your beholden to their direction. They let ie stagnate for 6 years, they finally updated it but dont support it on older systems forcing people to support 2 versions broken in different ways and incompatible with each other. They can (and have) drop products that their customers depend on such as j++ and foxpro, leaving those customers out in the cold. They could also go bust, be broken up by the doj etc... People like to think microsoft are too big to go under, but just look at enron and worldcom, it can happen, and in the it industry alone look at commodore and dec.
And going after clients who can't afford more expensive options is merely restricting you to the middle ground... What if those clients realise that they can save even more money by replacing their windows systems with linux, you will no longer be able to supply what they need and they will go to a vendor who can. You're supporting a shrinking middle band of clients who are willing to pay for the expense of windows but save costs in other areas.
Also thinking, if your creating apps that require ie, why bother creating web based apps at all? Why not simply create binary programs instead? One of the biggest goals of webapps is to make cross platform support easier, but your not doing that. A win32 binary app will still give you complete access to the system, and also be easier to have it run the same on all windows versions (as opposed to supporting the differences between ie6/ie7 and dealing with people who installed other browsers)
Very few companies *chose* a proprietary format, they used the only set of applications offered/available to them at the time, and didn't understand enough about it to realise the dangers of doing so. Fast forward a few years and now these companies are locked in. Many would very much prefer to replace windows with cheaper and more reliable alternatives, but feel they can't because they're locked in to proprietary formats. This is not a *positive* reason to "choose" windows, it is a negative reason which removes other choices.
To give another example, what if the local government in your town decided not to maintain the roads? The roads would fall apart, and end up full of holes and eventually degenerate into mud tracks. You may prefer to drive a luxury car for comfort, or perhaps a small economical car for environmental or fuel cost reasons. But because the roads are so shit, your choice is effectively taken away. You have to drive a 4x4, because anything else will get shaken apart and/or stuck.
Netscape dying leaving only IE only made your life easier because neither browser followed standards to begin with. What your saying you want is a single standard to work to, instead of multiple incompatible implementations. If you follow the published W3C standards, then things do work the same in firefox/safari/opera/etc, it's only ie that falls over. Any areas where standards compliant sites fail are considered bugs and the respective developers will aim to fix them, with the exception of microsoft who until last year weren't bothering to update their browser at all.
The only reason you can sell mysql based solutions is because microsoft don't dominate the database (or servers as a whole) market, so you are already seeing value from a market segment not dominated by microsoft, but seem unable to realise that those same benefits could extend to other areas.
Not having microsoft in a dominant position would most definately benefit consumers, but it would also benefit software vendors and pretty much everyone else except microsoft. Many software vendors have been squeezed out of the market by microsoft, look at Be, Novell, Corel, Digital Research, and countless more. With open standards and not a single proprietary vendor dominating the marketplace, many software vendors can thrive. Markets dominated by microsoft are now no go areas for smaller vendors, there is simply no money to be made competing against microsoft. Because of their size and market position the only way to compete with them at all is through open source, where a lack of profits doesn't have to kill the project.
Making your business dependent on microsoft is a crucial mistake, and there is historical precedent for this... Look at vendors such as Corel, Netscape and Novell, they both had highly successful products that dominated their own market segments, but they also depended on microsoft's os for most of their user base. The end result, is that inferior microsoft products were force fed down the existing channels alongside windows to force out the third party vendors. By contrast, Netscape remained the dominant browser on Solaris for many more years despite the availability of ie for solaris.
You may consider that microsoft aren't currently in the market to compete with your offerings, but they have demonstrated repeatedly their desire to aggressively expand and try to dominate any market that looks profitable. In recent years they have moved into search, begun producing games consoles, moved into mobile phones etc. All of this highly aggressively, they have spent billions of dollars (obtained through windows/office) on the xbox, and had virtually no profit to show for it yet, putting a level of pressure on the other players in the market that noone else could hope to achieve. How long before they compete against you? Could you afford to compete against microsoft?
When you delve deeper into these "charitable" donations, you'll find that the actual hard cash going to people who need it is fairly low. They contribute some money towards buying AIDS medication for instance, but on the stipulation that this medication is bought from particular companies (in which bill gates has an investment), thus not only is the money from the gates foundation spent on these drugs, but also money from other sources... The net result, is that the money coming *in* through the drugs companies is higher than the money going out. They also give away software (which costs them nothing), but write it off against tax as if it was full retail versions being sold, so they get a tax break on something they could never have sold in the first place. And as a side effect, they get more people locked in to their products which won't be given away free next time. And it all adds up to good PR to people who don't know the real motives.
Larry Ellison isn't in a position to do the same, what use would kids in the third world have for oracle?
So yes, bill gates has done a lot more harm than good, he is far more greedy than ellison but just better at it. If he was truly altruistic, he would donate hard cash with no strings attached, and maybe even do it anonymously...
There will always be people and businesses who will pay for a premium service instead of a free ad supported service... Your never gonna get a decent SLA with an ad supported services, if your paying you can expect and demand a higher class of service and better support.
However it's a fallacy that you get 100% compatibility, even with msoffice... Formats are subtly different between versions (except 2007, which is completely different) causing incompatibilities... Also configuration plays a part, your printer settings will affect how a word file will look even in the same version! And even security updates break things... The only way to ensure compatibility, is to ensure everyone in your organisation runs exactly the same version with exactly the same configuration, but you can still have problems if you try to open stuff up from external sources.
Most of the people who use ie and/or windows don't like it, they think there's nothing else and so merely accept it as an inconvenience of their job, kinda like a commute to work... Very few people actually enjoy traveling to work, but many people do so because they don't have a choice, or don't realise they do.
A lot of other people are forced to use windows because their company provides it, this isn't the case for me but i'm forced to use other company provided things, like a vastly underpowered car if i need to travel to a customer's site. As a side effect of this, people use it at home not because they want to but because they need compatibility with what they use at work.
Similarly a lot of people and companies use windows because they either have a large set of data stored in proprietary formats, or they need to communicate with other organisations that do.
Do you really think that without their market inertia and lockin microsoft would be anything like they are today? I think they'd be a support/outsourcing organisation if they existed at all, like ibm global services. What possible advantages do microsoft provide other than compatibility with themselves, and their market size (caused by the first point).
Companies want value for money, linux/solaris can be obtained for free or with varying levels of support from competing vendors, windows is only available from one place and at one price, there are no compatible competing suppliers. Companies want the impression of accountability as you pointed out (you never actually get accountability with software), commercial versions linux/solaris/etc can be obtained from a large number of lare companies, who will give you just as much "accountability" as microsoft does. What they really want is commercial support, which for linux etc, they can obtain from multiple companies in a competitive market.
Just look what happened to the hardware market, for the most part proprietary machines are gone or relegated to small niches... Sparc is still alive, but now runs an opensource os and sun are now providing x86/amd64 systems as well. Alpha is dead PA-RISC is dead Amiga/Atari/etc, are dead Apple use standard x86 based machines now, running an os which consists of a lot of open source components
Thanks to competition in the market, x86 hardware which was once a joke compared to high end risc architectures, is now much faster and a fraction of the cost... development speed has massively outstripped the pace of these proprietary architectures because they had less competition. By contrast, software is typically more expensive and slower, has much higher margins and is often updated much slower, and companies concentrate on adding new (unnecessary) features instead of making apps which were feature-complete 10 years ago faster and more stable.
A low end IBM PC used to cost $2k, ran at 4mhz and was considered the lowest model of system IBM produced. Laptops were far more expensive than desktops for a long time too. Now you can get a fully functional PC running at >1ghz for $200 or less.
Hardware vendors who stagnated died out, the Amiga was vastly superior to anything else available in 1985, it was 1992 before commodore updated it significantly, by which time others had caught up and overtaken them. If it weren't for open competition on the x86 compatibles market, we'd be stuck at 200mhz or below, with IBM/Intel charging through the nose for small incremental updates.
Yes, but there's a reason those people who accepted non-compete clauses end up unemployed for an extended period of time... Most people specialise in one skill, and doing a job relating to that skill is their best way to make money. If they find themselves unable to work in their primary field for a period of time due to a non compete agreement, they either have to do something else, and since theyre not qualified to do other jobs they end up doing unskilled work, or remain unemployed.
To copy someone else's example, if your a drummer and you go to work for a band who makes you sign a non compete... What happens when you leave that band? You can't be a drummer anymore, if your really lucky you might be able to earn some money teaching drumming lessons but thats also quite a different skill. Why should your previous company be able to fuck you over for the next X years after you leave? If they don't want you to compete against them, they should be required to continue paying you the same wage (and increase it by standard inflation each year for the duration of the contract term).
That's microsoft's legacy... They've convinced people that viruses, unreliability, security holes, having to run a stack of anti this anti that programs that cripple performance etc, are just "how it is"... The world now thinks that computers are horrendously unreliable insecure buggy and over complicated devices, all thanks to microsoft.
It does help Apple tho, i know quite a lot of people who thought like I described above, and once they were finally convinced to buy a mac, were absolutely overjoyed and never looked back.
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I actually found it the other way round...
Relative to OSX or windows ubuntu was much quicker to get up and running (tested on a dell c610 laptop), compared to windows (xp) on the same box:
Ubuntu detected all my hardware, although i had to use the restricted driver management to enable the wireless card and software modem (ubuntu advised me to do this the first time it booted).. windows on the other hand, lacked support for wireless and video, and i had to manually download drivers off the net using the hardwired ethernet.
Ubuntu came with a good set of apps, windows didn't, i had to perform manual installations on windows, sometimes involving finding physical media.
Ubuntu detected my HP PSC1355 printer/scanner/mediacard as soon as i connected it, and allowed me to access all of it's functions. windows required me to navigate HP's website (which admittedly is better than it used to be) to find drivers which then had to be manually downloaded and installed if i wanted to use the scanner or printer. OSX let me print by default and access the card reader, but i couldn't get HP's scanner drivers to work with leopard.
And there are some services you cannot easily turn off without breaking things...
They use router ACLs to drop connections to unused ports, router ACLs cause significant performance hits unless your running really high end kit with hardware firewall service modules. Really, if a port is unused it should be closed, and thus rejected by the target machine.
Also if they're using router ACLs to filter ports, that *is* a firewall, albeit a fairly crude one.
The OEM has a limited choice...
1, Just have IE installed...
2, Have both IE and a newer browser installed...
Number 2 is more work, wastes drive space and creates additional support burden.
If they could choose a browser then great, but as it stands theyre forced to include ie wether they want to or not.
People dont buy/install basic windows install media anyway...
They typically install a windows "distribution" supplied on a computer by an oem such as dell or hp.
Windows should come without a browser, leaving it to the distributor to install a browser of their choice, this is how it used to be and many distributors bundled netscape.
It's the built-in aspect which is the problem...
Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install), different linux distributions bundle different browsers and they can always be removed/replaced easily... What windows distributors (ie OEMs) really need is the ability to remove ie completely and replace it with a third party browser, instead of being forced to install the third party browser alongside the buggy outdated one that's built in.
And as for not having a functional browser, there are many many other areas where windows lacks functional apps in comparison to other systems, they don't bundle a functional spreadsheet (or even a facility to view spreadsheets) for instance, nor do they bundle an ssh client/server (everyone else does, and ssh is becoming the standard for remote admin of network devices, replacing telnet), they don't even have a secure erase tool by default and many other shortcomings compared to other systems.
Quite often the mechanism used to change the lights jams, and so lights will be stuck in a fixed position... One direction of traffic gets green, another gets red... See how long it take for people to realise the lights are busted and go anyway.
I know of a few rotaries in/around Boston (Massachusetts) , people seem to have no trouble navigating them... There's a few european-style ones which sit on bridges above highways allowing you to join or leave the highway in either direction.
Blocking trade won't hurt the government, it just hinders the little people and smaller businesses.
Some middle men in countries which don't have trade embargoes with either side will get rich by being middle men, buying american goods and selling them to iran at a premium. If this costs the government more, they will just extract more money from their people.
Seeing as they're planning to implement it, perhaps they can provide even greater feedback as to:
a, Whether or not msoffice 2007 actually complies with the published spec.
b, What areas of the spec are insufficient to implement the format adequately.
Not very much...
But people already go to gyms to exercise, and most gyms have lights, music playing, air conditioning and tv screens... They could offset some of their own electricity costs by hooking up the machines to generation devices and advertise themselves as a "green" gym.
Well yes, reserve prices are stupid and i tend to avoid auctions which set them...
I've been caught out by reserve auctions on ebay... I was the only bidder, which means there was noone else to push the price up to cover the reserve, even tho i was willing to pay that much. Because of that, the item didn't sell. Had they simply set a higher start price, i would quite happily have placed a bid there and won it for that price.
With windows you can only really get proper support from microsoft... If you want windows support, you have one choice.
With linux you can get proper support from a large number of big name vendors (ibm, novell, redhat etc) and a lot of smaller ones. You have the choice, and there is competition driving the pricing down.
It's not the fact that linux is free, it's the fact it can be obtained from and supported by multiple sources. Multiple vendors means you can switch if you're not happy with your current vendor, or if another one offers a better deal. And because there's competition and a low barrier to switching, the vendors need to work hard to win your business and keep it, thus giving you a better deal.
I never understood the issue of "not being able to run purchased software"...
There's less need to, a linux distro typically comes with a much larger selection of apps, and a package management tool allowing the automatic download of more.
If shops like Walmart are selling linux based systems in their stores, they could start stocking additional linux software to run on them.
What they really need to do is educate users that they don't need to buy additional software, and get everything they need included (or can download additionally for free).
The linux based machines will be perceived as even better value once users realise they get a full set of apps that are costly extras on windows.
Some countries provide this benefit to consumers as well, making electricity cheaper during a specific period (usually late at night)... People set power hungry appliances like water heaters, dishwashers, washing machines etc to come on at these times.
If you give them $200 it will only end up in the pockets of the corrupt governments in these countries.
Buy them, sell them with a reserve, if they don't sell for sufficient profit return them to the store after xmas as "unwanted gifts"...
The W3C don't define standards alone, as with many standards bodies the standards are set by users and organisations participating in the process. The standards W3C comes up with are created by a combination of their members (and that includes microsoft) for their mutual benefit, rather than defined by a single player for their own sole benefit. You are also free to join the W3C and play a part in developing future standards, if your ideas provide tangible benefits then they may very well be adopted.
The W3C are not the only standard body either, there is also the likes of Oasis, IANA and ISO although they are less relevant to website authoring.
You mention access to the entire computer, this is a BAD thing from the perspective of the web as a whole. You'd have to be pretty damn sure you trust a website before you'd give it unfettered access to your machine, which is why firefox doesn't provide such access by default. On the other hand, Java apps can have full access to your machine if so granted, as can firefox extensions. However users are obviously encouraged not to blindly trust arbitrary websites.
If your tied to a single OS in any case, there's no reason you couldn't provide a firefox plugin/extension to access the hardware you need. This way you could target (and bundle with your apps) the same version of firefox on any version of windows, instead of having to support 2 or more versions of ie.
The W3c standards relate to public websites, it is not generally a good idea to give arbitrary websites complete access to your system and thus none of their standards specify ways to do this. However it is possible to do this with java in a cross platform way.
Being dependant on ms is not just bad because they can wipe you out at a moment's notice, it's also bad because your beholden to their direction. They let ie stagnate for 6 years, they finally updated it but dont support it on older systems forcing people to support 2 versions broken in different ways and incompatible with each other. They can (and have) drop products that their customers depend on such as j++ and foxpro, leaving those customers out in the cold. They could also go bust, be broken up by the doj etc... People like to think microsoft are too big to go under, but just look at enron and worldcom, it can happen, and in the it industry alone look at commodore and dec.
And going after clients who can't afford more expensive options is merely restricting you to the middle ground... What if those clients realise that they can save even more money by replacing their windows systems with linux, you will no longer be able to supply what they need and they will go to a vendor who can. You're supporting a shrinking middle band of clients who are willing to pay for the expense of windows but save costs in other areas.
Also thinking, if your creating apps that require ie, why bother creating web based apps at all? Why not simply create binary programs instead? One of the biggest goals of webapps is to make cross platform support easier, but your not doing that. A win32 binary app will still give you complete access to the system, and also be easier to have it run the same on all windows versions (as opposed to supporting the differences between ie6/ie7 and dealing with people who installed other browsers)
Very few companies *chose* a proprietary format, they used the only set of applications offered/available to them at the time, and didn't understand enough about it to realise the dangers of doing so. Fast forward a few years and now these companies are locked in. Many would very much prefer to replace windows with cheaper and more reliable alternatives, but feel they can't because they're locked in to proprietary formats.
This is not a *positive* reason to "choose" windows, it is a negative reason which removes other choices.
To give another example, what if the local government in your town decided not to maintain the roads? The roads would fall apart, and end up full of holes and eventually degenerate into mud tracks. You may prefer to drive a luxury car for comfort, or perhaps a small economical car for environmental or fuel cost reasons. But because the roads are so shit, your choice is effectively taken away. You have to drive a 4x4, because anything else will get shaken apart and/or stuck.
Netscape dying leaving only IE only made your life easier because neither browser followed standards to begin with. What your saying you want is a single standard to work to, instead of multiple incompatible implementations. If you follow the published W3C standards, then things do work the same in firefox/safari/opera/etc, it's only ie that falls over. Any areas where standards compliant sites fail are considered bugs and the respective developers will aim to fix them, with the exception of microsoft who until last year weren't bothering to update their browser at all.
The only reason you can sell mysql based solutions is because microsoft don't dominate the database (or servers as a whole) market, so you are already seeing value from a market segment not dominated by microsoft, but seem unable to realise that those same benefits could extend to other areas.
Not having microsoft in a dominant position would most definately benefit consumers, but it would also benefit software vendors and pretty much everyone else except microsoft.
Many software vendors have been squeezed out of the market by microsoft, look at Be, Novell, Corel, Digital Research, and countless more. With open standards and not a single proprietary vendor dominating the marketplace, many software vendors can thrive. Markets dominated by microsoft are now no go areas for smaller vendors, there is simply no money to be made competing against microsoft. Because of their size and market position the only way to compete with them at all is through open source, where a lack of profits doesn't have to kill the project.
Making your business dependent on microsoft is a crucial mistake, and there is historical precedent for this... Look at vendors such as Corel, Netscape and Novell, they both had highly successful products that dominated their own market segments, but they also depended on microsoft's os for most of their user base. The end result, is that inferior microsoft products were force fed down the existing channels alongside windows to force out the third party vendors.
By contrast, Netscape remained the dominant browser on Solaris for many more years despite the availability of ie for solaris.
You may consider that microsoft aren't currently in the market to compete with your offerings, but they have demonstrated repeatedly their desire to aggressively expand and try to dominate any market that looks profitable. In recent years they have moved into search, begun producing games consoles, moved into mobile phones etc. All of this highly aggressively, they have spent billions of dollars (obtained through windows/office) on the xbox, and had virtually no profit to show for it yet, putting a level of pressure on the other players in the market that noone else could hope to achieve.
How long before they compete against you? Could you afford to compete against microsoft?
When you delve deeper into these "charitable" donations, you'll find that the actual hard cash going to people who need it is fairly low.
They contribute some money towards buying AIDS medication for instance, but on the stipulation that this medication is bought from particular companies (in which bill gates has an investment), thus not only is the money from the gates foundation spent on these drugs, but also money from other sources... The net result, is that the money coming *in* through the drugs companies is higher than the money going out.
They also give away software (which costs them nothing), but write it off against tax as if it was full retail versions being sold, so they get a tax break on something they could never have sold in the first place. And as a side effect, they get more people locked in to their products which won't be given away free next time.
And it all adds up to good PR to people who don't know the real motives.
Larry Ellison isn't in a position to do the same, what use would kids in the third world have for oracle?
So yes, bill gates has done a lot more harm than good, he is far more greedy than ellison but just better at it. If he was truly altruistic, he would donate hard cash with no strings attached, and maybe even do it anonymously...
Except that microsoft have a history of malice, and are far too successful (through many malicious acts) to be called incompetent.
There will always be people and businesses who will pay for a premium service instead of a free ad supported service...
Your never gonna get a decent SLA with an ad supported services, if your paying you can expect and demand a higher class of service and better support.
However it's a fallacy that you get 100% compatibility, even with msoffice...
Formats are subtly different between versions (except 2007, which is completely different) causing incompatibilities...
Also configuration plays a part, your printer settings will affect how a word file will look even in the same version!
And even security updates break things...
The only way to ensure compatibility, is to ensure everyone in your organisation runs exactly the same version with exactly the same configuration, but you can still have problems if you try to open stuff up from external sources.
Most of the people who use ie and/or windows don't like it, they think there's nothing else and so merely accept it as an inconvenience of their job, kinda like a commute to work... Very few people actually enjoy traveling to work, but many people do so because they don't have a choice, or don't realise they do.
A lot of other people are forced to use windows because their company provides it, this isn't the case for me but i'm forced to use other company provided things, like a vastly underpowered car if i need to travel to a customer's site. As a side effect of this, people use it at home not because they want to but because they need compatibility with what they use at work.
Similarly a lot of people and companies use windows because they either have a large set of data stored in proprietary formats, or they need to communicate with other organisations that do.
Do you really think that without their market inertia and lockin microsoft would be anything like they are today? I think they'd be a support/outsourcing organisation if they existed at all, like ibm global services. What possible advantages do microsoft provide other than compatibility with themselves, and their market size (caused by the first point).
Companies want value for money, linux/solaris can be obtained for free or with varying levels of support from competing vendors, windows is only available from one place and at one price, there are no compatible competing suppliers.
Companies want the impression of accountability as you pointed out (you never actually get accountability with software), commercial versions linux/solaris/etc can be obtained from a large number of lare companies, who will give you just as much "accountability" as microsoft does. What they really want is commercial support, which for linux etc, they can obtain from multiple companies in a competitive market.
Just look what happened to the hardware market, for the most part proprietary machines are gone or relegated to small niches...
Sparc is still alive, but now runs an opensource os and sun are now providing x86/amd64 systems as well.
Alpha is dead
PA-RISC is dead
Amiga/Atari/etc, are dead
Apple use standard x86 based machines now, running an os which consists of a lot of open source components
Thanks to competition in the market, x86 hardware which was once a joke compared to high end risc architectures, is now much faster and a fraction of the cost... development speed has massively outstripped the pace of these proprietary architectures because they had less competition.
By contrast, software is typically more expensive and slower, has much higher margins and is often updated much slower, and companies concentrate on adding new (unnecessary) features instead of making apps which were feature-complete 10 years ago faster and more stable.
A low end IBM PC used to cost $2k, ran at 4mhz and was considered the lowest model of system IBM produced. Laptops were far more expensive than desktops for a long time too.
Now you can get a fully functional PC running at >1ghz for $200 or less.
Hardware vendors who stagnated died out, the Amiga was vastly superior to anything else available in 1985, it was 1992 before commodore updated it significantly, by which time others had caught up and overtaken them. If it weren't for open competition on the x86 compatibles market, we'd be stuck at 200mhz or below, with IBM/Intel charging through the nose for small incremental updates.
Yes, but there's a reason those people who accepted non-compete clauses end up unemployed for an extended period of time...
Most people specialise in one skill, and doing a job relating to that skill is their best way to make money. If they find themselves unable to work in their primary field for a period of time due to a non compete agreement, they either have to do something else, and since theyre not qualified to do other jobs they end up doing unskilled work, or remain unemployed.
To copy someone else's example, if your a drummer and you go to work for a band who makes you sign a non compete... What happens when you leave that band? You can't be a drummer anymore, if your really lucky you might be able to earn some money teaching drumming lessons but thats also quite a different skill. Why should your previous company be able to fuck you over for the next X years after you leave? If they don't want you to compete against them, they should be required to continue paying you the same wage (and increase it by standard inflation each year for the duration of the contract term).
That's microsoft's legacy...
They've convinced people that viruses, unreliability, security holes, having to run a stack of anti this anti that programs that cripple performance etc, are just "how it is"...
The world now thinks that computers are horrendously unreliable insecure buggy and over complicated devices, all thanks to microsoft.
It does help Apple tho, i know quite a lot of people who thought like I described above, and once they were finally convinced to buy a mac, were absolutely overjoyed and never looked back.