I will grant that Robertson is a terribly antagonizing fellow if you're competing with him
He's hard to understand. Part of his reasoning may have been to play the David/Goliah game, another element was likely to have been leveraging the name recognition.
Regardless, he seems to disregard the cost of litigation. I would think it far preferable to hire engineers to build a compelling product, rather than expensive lawyers to play these games. He obliterated MP3.com investor dollars with RIAA litigation. Apparently he didn't learn from that. The really amazing thing about him is to consider that if he had stayed with his original business (search), he would probably be a billionaire now.
Interesting to note how many times TiVo is mentioned in the posts. I bought one three years ago, and can honestly say watching TV w/o a DVR is almost impossible for me now. That's not to say I don't watch ads anymore, either. A few will actually capture my attention as I fast forward, the rest are ignored. I've always thought DVRs could be really good for advertising, once ad agencies figure out how to exploit their characteristics. But as usual, big media reaches for the lawyers instead.
The networks views of video games sure miss the mark, too. TV companies have been flailing around for compelling interactive TV shows, yet the obvious success story is online gaming. Seems to me online games certainly qualify as interactive television. The "tuning" process and consoles are a bit different from TV sets, but in general games are broadcast content produced by studios for distribution.
Possibly the next Ted Turner will be someone who starts a "game" channel. Maybe the prototype is what we find in hotels and on intercontinental flights today.
Eventually IBM were investigated for this behaviour, and this investigation let (indirectly maybe) to them making the specification of their new PC open
From what I have read, and what some retired IBM people told me, the IBM PC was "open" because they didn't want to develop hardware for it. IBM was freaked out by the success of the competitors, and had to get a product out there. Even so, they didn't think they would sell very many of them. Turned out they sold as many in the first few months as they had projected to sell in a year.
Once they realized the "error" of their ways, they came up with the proprietary MCA PCs. (Anyone remember those?)
I suppose IBM is good thing for Linux so far... But I don't trust IBM at all. When they figure out how use Linux to get customer lock in, they will certainly do it. Not that they shouldn't; they are in business to make money. Who knows, it may be their undocumented grand dream to get sued for anti-trust again. Bet they settle faster, though.
"Solution: GreyMagic started work on this issue with Microsoft on 11-Mar-2004. They have quickly confirmed our findings and were able to produce a fix less than two days later. As a result, Hotmail is no longer vulnerable to this method of exploitation.
All attempts to contact Yahoo unfortunately failed. Mail was sent to security and secure at yahoo.com and at yahoo-inc.com, no replies were received to date. "
A monopoly is a company that dominates a market. There are natural monopolies, and they are legal. It is not legal to leverage legally-gained monopoly power to "enforce" your monopoly on others (by keeping competition out of the market) or to gain monopoly power in other markets
Guess I should have used better wording. I have always felt quite welcome in Europe. I have great conversations there, tasty food, etc. Some may find it surprising, but I found France to be quite enjoyable. Even other Europeans tell me the French are hostile. Not at all in my experience.
quality-of-life statistics such as paid holiday (2 weeks in the US, 6 weeks in Germany)
Better have a look at the unemployment rates in Europe as compared with the US as well. Much less economic mobilty in Euroland, too.
- in Europe government bodies are less in hock to special interest groups
"EU begins investigating complaints from Sun Microsystems that Microsoft withheld software code rivals needed for their server software to interface as well as Microsoft's own."
Pathetic. This action has Sun's fingerprints all over it. Plenty of additional references to Sun in other articles as well.
Near monopoly? What kind of jurisprudence is that? Good enough to pick up $600M+ USD. Guess it could be considered the ulimate hotel tax. Glad I can stay with relatives!
Ignorance of the law is not seen as a valid excuse for breaking it.
So tell us, exactly which Euro law did Microsoft break? I saw an interesting discussion last night on CNBC during which it was pointed out that there was no Euro law broken by Microsoft. Bundling the media player for FREE doesn't exactly harm the consumer. Microsoft isn't stopping anyone from running another one. Essentially the EU hopped on the US anti-trust law, and decided to pursue some fines and penalties. Evidently they had received complaints from a competitor - Sun Microsystems. Imagine that. One can imagine the discussion at in Monti's office. "We should jump on this, think of the money we can get and how we can feel good about ourselves for protecting the 'consumer'. Oh, Sun you say? Who cares, there's $650M in it for us."
Anyone want to venture why European economies are in such bad shape?
Seems to me Microsoft might as well start playing hardball here - Drop the price of an Xbox to $0, offer tracks on the new music service for $0.50, charge $10 or give away copies of Enterprise Architect, take a few high profile clients and offer huge discounts for OS and Office site licenses.
If they don't, they will be accused of being monopolists anyway, leading to more and more fines, (just where does the money from fines go?) and more bad publicity. Since there is now a populist appeal to going after the company, they might as well create counter sentiment buy really becoming popular with consumers.
Microsoft doesn't have a business problem - it has a political problem. Anti-trust cases are inherently political, so we shall see if they learn to play that game. I still don't believe Microsoft is any more of a monopoly than Intel, but Intel knows how to play the game.
Today I learned something about/. editorial policy. When I orginally posted the story, I thought it was interesting from the perspective of what this new disappointment might mean for Steve Ballmer as CEO. All of those comments were deleted from the post, so I guess a story isn't interesting unless it can make Microsoft look bad in some fashion.
I have a suspicion that institutional investors in Microsoft are having their patience tested with a stock price that hasn't moved, no clear vision being stated by the company (remember.Net everything?) and no official statement about how the cash hoard will be used. Unlike OSS, Microsoft has investors that can and will influence the direction of the company.
If institutions force Ballmer out, what strategy will Microsoft pursue, and what might this mean for technology? That was the question I wanted to address. Ironically, I even stated in my post that I didn't want this to become another Microsoft v. OSS story, as there are plenty of those already. The business problems of Ballmer might not seem to be a technical story, but I think they absolutely are, as whatever Microsoft does to satisfy its big investors will have great significance for the tech world.
Actually they are in the business sense, which is what matters. (The point of the parent.) I remember the days of Windows 3.11 - Plug in a couple of NICs, connect - Instant network, unlike the Novell network installation nightmare of the time. Sure, Windows was technically inferior to *nix and OS/2, but it was a lot cheaper, had a consistent API, and the Petzold book. All of this attracted Borland, which made Turbo C/C++, arguably the best IDE at the time, and much better than anything on *nix.
Despite the quality of Turbo C, the language was still an impediment for the mass of people who might like to program, so 'soft came up with VB. People can rant and rave all they want about VB's technical inferiority, but in the hands of a decent programmer, it blew everything else away in terms of productivity. Add the third party support, and it is still untouched in the *nix world, as a business proposition. The amount of money 'soft spent on hardware compatibility is not to be dismissed, either. So, there are a few examples of innovation, at least in terms of initiative.
BTW, what exactly is innovative about *nix desktops that look like Windows and office suites that strive to replicate the functions of Microsoft Office?
This is a Wall Street Journal article, not a computer focused article
It's also Lee Gomes article. If you can, look through his previous missives. It's fairly apparent he doesn't care for Microsoft at all, and never has. Maybe it's interesting in the sense that there are die hard Microsoft haters outside of/. as well.
While Pixar is amazing at what it does, it's no Disney
Wall Street is beginning to take the same view. People have come to the conclusion that animation has to be 3D to sell, but try telling that to Fox (Simpsons, King of the Hill.) Don't forget Southpark, or all of the anime stuff, either. The key to most entertainment is the story.
Another question to ponder is what happens to Apple if Jobs if occupied doing other things? Can he really run Pixar and Apple for a long time, and not have both worse off for it? So far Apple has a bad track record when left on its own, and Wall Street doesn't see that Jobs has done much about succession. No question, Jobs is brilliant at popularizing technology. But has he built anything that will last once he's no longer involved? Pixar probably has a better chance, since it was around before Jobs was on the scene.
Seems a bit of a stretch to thing 'soft would have given all of these organizations the complete source tree. If they did, then I am far more amazed the source wasn't leaked a long time ago. It's a bit hard to believe 'soft licensed the entire build tree to anyone.
Well, MyDoom should be an eye-opener for you then. It proved (not that there should have been any doubt) that the problem of viruses is truly OS independent. Think about it: The virus shows up as a zip file which the user has to open. Then the user has to execute the payload. In other words, the social engineering was the key, not the OS. What's to prevent a Linux user running as *cough*Lindows*cough* root from being affected the same way? An Apple user? Nothing. Don't say they wouldn't be root, because a Windows box properly configured wouldn't have this problem, either. Now we are back to social engineering.
Guess what, Linux has a reputation of being secure, so users will probably be given a false sense of security as well. Who knows, this might make home Linux desktops more vulnerable.
Are you running a business to make money, or just to say you used OSS? It seems pretty clear that you don't have a business plan, because if you did, the cost of licensing v. cost of finding something that might work would have become apparent, and you wouldn't have had to ask this question. Forget about technology for a sec, get out your favorite spreadsheet and crunch your finances. Get your priorities in order. Don't make the same mistakes my former associates and I did
What brought your company down (surely the reasons you listed couldn't have)?
Revenues did decrease, but we had a lot of good experience to leverage a funding effort. Unfortunately infighting did ultimately undermine any chance of long-term success. Be absolutely certain of your partners.
how did you handle marketing
One of the principals in the company had a huge contact list. That's why we brought him in, and it was one of the better moves.
The sad mockery of justice that the US did with Microsoft would have not happened in any European country.
Yeah, that's because Microsoft wouldn't have happened in a European country... Or Intel, Or Sun, or Oracle, AMD, etc, etc. Let's not forget bio-tech, either. What was the nationality of the company that sequenced the human genome? Europe is hostile to new enterprise formation. Things aren't perfect in the US, but Europe is in no place to preach. Euro tax laws are burdensome and the EU is turning into a fiasco. The last thing we need is European "objectivity" about business practices. Before you roll out Enron, Worldcom, etc, have a look at the history of Lernout & Hauspie, Adecco, and Parmalat to name a few.
The financial news I've been reading indicates the divorce isn't completely final. Might just be a negotiating tactic by Jobs.
This is kind of off topic, but I wonder if Apple/Pixar are more dependent on Jobs' brilliance than is good for business. Has he built a managment team that could carry on in the same way? Or are Apple and Pixar all about Jobs? (Think Wang Labs here. Great while the founder was around, not much good after he left.)
Slashdot Mirror
I will grant that Robertson is a terribly antagonizing fellow if you're competing with him
He's hard to understand. Part of his reasoning may have been to play the David/Goliah game, another element was likely to have been leveraging the name recognition.
Regardless, he seems to disregard the cost of litigation. I would think it far preferable to hire engineers to build a compelling product, rather than expensive lawyers to play these games. He obliterated MP3.com investor dollars with RIAA litigation. Apparently he didn't learn from that. The really amazing thing about him is to consider that if he had stayed with his original business (search), he would probably be a billionaire now.
Right, you would think the first think they would have tasked it to do is DDR.
Wonder how many /.-ers, um, never mind...
Why PHBs Fear Linux
Maybe one should consider that the people who write the checks notice they are frequently called "PHBs" by people who love Linux.
5 cents please.
Interesting to note how many times TiVo is mentioned in the posts. I bought one three years ago, and can honestly say watching TV w/o a DVR is almost impossible for me now. That's not to say I don't watch ads anymore, either. A few will actually capture my attention as I fast forward, the rest are ignored. I've always thought DVRs could be really good for advertising, once ad agencies figure out how to exploit their characteristics. But as usual, big media reaches for the lawyers instead.
The networks views of video games sure miss the mark, too. TV companies have been flailing around for compelling interactive TV shows, yet the obvious success story is online gaming. Seems to me online games certainly qualify as interactive television. The "tuning" process and consoles are a bit different from TV sets, but in general games are broadcast content produced by studios for distribution.
Possibly the next Ted Turner will be someone who starts a "game" channel. Maybe the prototype is what we find in hotels and on intercontinental flights today.
Eventually IBM were investigated for this behaviour, and this investigation let (indirectly maybe) to them making the specification of their new PC open
From what I have read, and what some retired IBM people told me, the IBM PC was "open" because they didn't want to develop hardware for it. IBM was freaked out by the success of the competitors, and had to get a product out there. Even so, they didn't think they would sell very many of them. Turned out they sold as many in the first few months as they had projected to sell in a year.
Once they realized the "error" of their ways, they came up with the proprietary MCA PCs. (Anyone remember those?)
I suppose IBM is good thing for Linux so far... But I don't trust IBM at all. When they figure out how use Linux to get customer lock in, they will certainly do it. Not that they shouldn't; they are in business to make money. Who knows, it may be their undocumented grand dream to get sued for anti-trust again. Bet they settle faster, though.
"Solution: GreyMagic started work on this issue with Microsoft on 11-Mar-2004. They have quickly confirmed our findings and were able to produce a fix less than two days later. As a result, Hotmail is no longer vulnerable to this method of exploitation. All attempts to contact Yahoo unfortunately failed. Mail was sent to security and secure at yahoo.com and at yahoo-inc.com, no replies were received to date. "
A monopoly is a company that dominates a market. There are natural monopolies, and they are legal. It is not legal to leverage legally-gained monopoly power to "enforce" your monopoly on others (by keeping competition out of the market) or to gain monopoly power in other markets
Sounds like this explanation to me.
But isn't Microsoft a monopoly? I thought monopolies kept the competition from the market?
Gee, wonder what people would say if it turned out Microsoft never was a monopoly...
Guess I should have used better wording. I have always felt quite welcome in Europe. I have great conversations there, tasty food, etc. Some may find it surprising, but I found France to be quite enjoyable. Even other Europeans tell me the French are hostile. Not at all in my experience.
quality-of-life statistics such as paid holiday (2 weeks in the US, 6 weeks in Germany)
Better have a look at the unemployment rates in Europe as compared with the US as well. Much less economic mobilty in Euroland, too.
- in Europe government bodies are less in hock to special interest groups
Then you will find this interesting:
(From the timeline in the link:)
"EU begins investigating complaints from Sun Microsystems that Microsoft withheld software code rivals needed for their server software to interface as well as Microsoft's own."
Pathetic. This action has Sun's fingerprints all over it. Plenty of additional references to Sun in other articles as well.
Interesting choice of words:
"The Commission characterized Windows, which runs on more than 95 percent of all personal computers, as a "near monopoly."
Near monopoly? What kind of jurisprudence is that? Good enough to pick up $600M+ USD. Guess it could be considered the ulimate hotel tax. Glad I can stay with relatives!
Here you go. Also note that these data are for 2002. US economic growth is even better, now.
Free, Universal Healthcare,
Wait lists?
near-free higher education
If one can get in.
Sad, really. I thoroughly recommend a trip over to Europe to any American
Glad to hear it. I'm planning to travel to Europe again this summer, to visit family and friends. Wouldn't want to feel unwelcome this time.
Homelessness is rare
Are you sure?
Ignorance of the law is not seen as a valid excuse for breaking it.
So tell us, exactly which Euro law did Microsoft break? I saw an interesting discussion last night on CNBC during which it was pointed out that there was no Euro law broken by Microsoft. Bundling the media player for FREE doesn't exactly harm the consumer. Microsoft isn't stopping anyone from running another one. Essentially the EU hopped on the US anti-trust law, and decided to pursue some fines and penalties. Evidently they had received complaints from a competitor - Sun Microsystems. Imagine that. One can imagine the discussion at in Monti's office. "We should jump on this, think of the money we can get and how we can feel good about ourselves for protecting the 'consumer'. Oh, Sun you say? Who cares, there's $650M in it for us."
Anyone want to venture why European economies are in such bad shape?
Seems to me Microsoft might as well start playing hardball here - Drop the price of an Xbox to $0, offer tracks on the new music service for $0.50, charge $10 or give away copies of Enterprise Architect, take a few high profile clients and offer huge discounts for OS and Office site licenses.
If they don't, they will be accused of being monopolists anyway, leading to more and more fines, (just where does the money from fines go?) and more bad publicity. Since there is now a populist appeal to going after the company, they might as well create counter sentiment buy really becoming popular with consumers.
Microsoft doesn't have a business problem - it has a political problem. Anti-trust cases are inherently political, so we shall see if they learn to play that game. I still don't believe Microsoft is any more of a monopoly than Intel, but Intel knows how to play the game.
Might follow the Microsoft "Open Source" model.
How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?
Here's one: Microsoft
Today I learned something about
I have a suspicion that institutional investors in Microsoft are having their patience tested with a stock price that hasn't moved, no clear vision being stated by the company (remember .Net everything?) and no official statement about how the cash hoard will be used. Unlike OSS, Microsoft has investors that can and will influence the direction of the company.
If institutions force Ballmer out, what strategy will Microsoft pursue, and what might this mean for technology? That was the question I wanted to address. Ironically, I even stated in my post that I didn't want this to become another Microsoft v. OSS story, as there are plenty of those already. The business problems of Ballmer might not seem to be a technical story, but I think they absolutely are, as whatever Microsoft does to satisfy its big investors will have great significance for the tech world.
Actually, they're really not.
Actually they are in the business sense, which is what matters. (The point of the parent.) I remember the days of Windows 3.11 - Plug in a couple of NICs, connect - Instant network, unlike the Novell network installation nightmare of the time. Sure, Windows was technically inferior to *nix and OS/2, but it was a lot cheaper, had a consistent API, and the Petzold book. All of this attracted Borland, which made Turbo C/C++, arguably the best IDE at the time, and much better than anything on *nix.
Despite the quality of Turbo C, the language was still an impediment for the mass of people who might like to program, so 'soft came up with VB. People can rant and rave all they want about VB's technical inferiority, but in the hands of a decent programmer, it blew everything else away in terms of productivity. Add the third party support, and it is still untouched in the *nix world, as a business proposition. The amount of money 'soft spent on hardware compatibility is not to be dismissed, either. So, there are a few examples of innovation, at least in terms of initiative.
BTW, what exactly is innovative about *nix desktops that look like Windows and office suites that strive to replicate the functions of Microsoft Office?
This is a Wall Street Journal article, not a computer focused article
It's also Lee Gomes article. If you can, look through his previous missives. It's fairly apparent he doesn't care for Microsoft at all, and never has. Maybe it's interesting in the sense that there are die hard Microsoft haters outside of /. as well.
While Pixar is amazing at what it does, it's no Disney
Wall Street is beginning to take the same view. People have come to the conclusion that animation has to be 3D to sell, but try telling that to Fox (Simpsons, King of the Hill.) Don't forget Southpark, or all of the anime stuff, either. The key to most entertainment is the story.
Another question to ponder is what happens to Apple if Jobs if occupied doing other things? Can he really run Pixar and Apple for a long time, and not have both worse off for it? So far Apple has a bad track record when left on its own, and Wall Street doesn't see that Jobs has done much about succession. No question, Jobs is brilliant at popularizing technology. But has he built anything that will last once he's no longer involved? Pixar probably has a better chance, since it was around before Jobs was on the scene.
Just 'cause
Seems a bit of a stretch to thing 'soft would have given all of these organizations the complete source tree. If they did, then I am far more amazed the source wasn't leaked a long time ago. It's a bit hard to believe 'soft licensed the entire build tree to anyone.
Makes a pretty good headline, though.
affect Windows machines only
Well, MyDoom should be an eye-opener for you then. It proved (not that there should have been any doubt) that the problem of viruses is truly OS independent. Think about it: The virus shows up as a zip file which the user has to open. Then the user has to execute the payload. In other words, the social engineering was the key, not the OS. What's to prevent a Linux user running as *cough*Lindows*cough* root from being affected the same way? An Apple user? Nothing. Don't say they wouldn't be root, because a Windows box properly configured wouldn't have this problem, either. Now we are back to social engineering.
Guess what, Linux has a reputation of being secure, so users will probably be given a false sense of security as well. Who knows, this might make home Linux desktops more vulnerable.
The parent should not have been modded flamebait.
Are you running a business to make money, or just to say you used OSS? It seems pretty clear that you don't have a business plan, because if you did, the cost of licensing v. cost of finding something that might work would have become apparent, and you wouldn't have had to ask this question. Forget about technology for a sec, get out your favorite spreadsheet and crunch your finances. Get your priorities in order. Don't make the same mistakes my former associates and I did
What did your business do?
dot-com.
What brought your company down (surely the reasons you listed couldn't have)?
Revenues did decrease, but we had a lot of good experience to leverage a funding effort. Unfortunately infighting did ultimately undermine any chance of long-term success. Be absolutely certain of your partners.
how did you handle marketing
One of the principals in the company had a huge contact list. That's why we brought him in, and it was one of the better moves.
The sad mockery of justice that the US did with Microsoft would have not happened in any European country.
Yeah, that's because Microsoft wouldn't have happened in a European country... Or Intel, Or Sun, or Oracle, AMD, etc, etc. Let's not forget bio-tech, either. What was the nationality of the company that sequenced the human genome? Europe is hostile to new enterprise formation. Things aren't perfect in the US, but Europe is in no place to preach. Euro tax laws are burdensome and the EU is turning into a fiasco. The last thing we need is European "objectivity" about business practices. Before you roll out Enron, Worldcom, etc, have a look at the history of Lernout & Hauspie, Adecco, and Parmalat to name a few.
I admit, I am fed up with European US bashing.
The financial news I've been reading indicates the divorce isn't completely final. Might just be a negotiating tactic by Jobs.
This is kind of off topic, but I wonder if Apple/Pixar are more dependent on Jobs' brilliance than is good for business. Has he built a managment team that could carry on in the same way? Or are Apple and Pixar all about Jobs? (Think Wang Labs here. Great while the founder was around, not much good after he left.)