2. Pretty unlikely. Cloning the Windows API is not just the mother of all emulation challenges, it's liable to drive the developer insane.
I agree a clone of the WinAPI is VERY unlikely. However, I don't know how needed that is. I'd guess a much more likely scenerio (which would be MUCH easier and have many of the advantages) would be to port Mono to the new Intel based OSX. This wouldn't allow all Windows apps to run, but would certainly at least open the door for Win apps to run relatively easily.
That is for Office 2003 which obviously isn't open. This article is refering to the next version of office. Now many of these restrictions MAY still exist with the next version, but we'll have to wait and see.
Presumably, much of this is going away since they are saying the new version will be open, but what is "open" to MS may not be quite what you'd expect;-) Again, we'll have to wait and see, but your above reference doesn't apply to what is being discussed (except to point out past conditions).
I think DeLay is exactly what the country really needs right now! We've been divided for so long and Tom can really bring us all together. As a registered republican, I like seeing how most of my republican and democrate friends can come togehter and agree DeLay is a disgrace. Between his actions and spewing about judges, I really feel this is a moment where we can begin the heal as a country and feel like one again over our discust with him.
It really give me hope for the future! Thanks Tom!
You seem passionate about this (and I can respect that) so let me give you a hint. If you want to spin some conspiracy theory about this, you are pointing to the wrong event. While the big one time dividend is really a non-issue, the ongoing smaller dividends could actually have an effect.
MS has traditinally been held in "growth" portfolios. Once a company reaches the size of MS sustaining that growth becomes VERY difficult. MS may well have seen investors droping MS from such "growth" portfolios and wanted another group of investors to pick this up. By offering ongoing dividends, investors can begin to add MS to thier "income" portfolios.
This is actually pretty normal, but I'm sure you can spin this into something evil if you'd like and it would actually have some sound reasoning behind it.
OK, your funny;-) I happen to work in an off-shore hedge fund with over 9 billion in assets under management. We've averaged better than 30% annualized ROR since inception (though we hit rough spots during the bust and only managed to 15-20% for a couple years). Also, our main investment methodology is statistical arbitrage so I certainly have no stake in MS. We simply use mathematical models to take advantage of inefficiecies in the market and currently have no major holdings of MS.
That said, I'm sorry for the 101 lecturing but I'm not sure if you can understand anything more as you seem to be struggling with that.
Perhaps you are talking about joe six-pack type investors and perhaps they WOULD somehow be "emotionally" impacted enough by this one time bulk dividend to have that impact thier decision. I really have experience in that level of stupidity. Rule number one to investing, do not make decsions based on emotions!!!!!
However, you HAVE to realize this type of investor has basically zero impact on the market (if I were to be VERY VERY VERY generous maybe 5%). The markets go as the institutional investors go. Period! There are many investing methodologies (well actually a hand full of main methods with a number of variations) and I cannot really think of any which would be affected by a one time bulk dividend like this! If you know anyone who suggests a stock because of a one time dividend, DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY!!!;-) Sure institutional investors wouldn't have been upset by getting a nice $50 million dividend from MS, but I can promise that won't produce any "warm fuzzy" feelings the next time they are considering to buy or sell MS! Hell, some investors could have been quite pissed about the dividend. Depending on the investment structure, many will work to limit thier shareholder's tax liablility and in most cases that big dividend would be a big unexpected realized gain in the current period.
I am sorry if this is hard to understand, but institutional investors lead the market and they just won't care about such a one time event! Even if your aunt Suzy was really excited by this and wanted to go buy MS because of this news, I can promise you that has no effect.
Again, I ask you to give me any link or reference materials which support your position. If this is such a clear case certainly there are plenty of brokers who have done statistical analysis of how this will effect MS stock price. Hell, I'd be absolutely SHOCKED if you could even find one reputable broker who changed his advice based on this as it JUST DOESN'T MATTER TO ANYONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING! BTW, did you notice MS's stock price had basically no change on very average volume after this was announced? I guess people didn't get quite as excited about this as you'd think, huh.
I assume they are talking about "format" in terms like file system not actually changing how the physical read/writes happen.
Both could be considered formats, but in this case I assume they mean format of the data not the disks pyhsical format (though some past DRM schemes have tried small tweaks to the physical format like placing bits where a CD burner cannot normally write at).
Normally I'm not in favour of municipal wireless, but I'm actually more against having a law banning it.
In most cases I think it would be a stupid waste of money, but in those cases the citizens of that town should make the decision for themselves. At least having this option could be used as a bargining chip if the telcos aren't providing adequate services.
Now I wouldn't really be against a law banning municipal wireless funded with tax dollars. That would seem a fair compromise. I think municipal wireless could be properly done and possibly be great, but if it relies on tax dollars then that is a problem.
I think if municipal wireless is considered, it has to 1) be able to sustain itself 2) not require participation 3) still allow competition. If a municipality really believes they can provide better service for a better price then they should issue municipal bonds to finance the initial up-front costs. This way it is paid for only by those who want it and believe in it. Then the municipal service should not be free, there should be a monthly charge just like any other ISP. That fee should be used to run the project and pay-off the bonds.
Now if this can be done to offer better service for a better price than telcos have nothing to bitch about. If this fails, then its those who thought it was such a good idea who lose and not everyone else.
Sorry to reply again, but I forgot to make one point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems your theory is that MS did this 32 billion bulk dividend to somehow bolster the stock price right?
I just wanted to make sure you realize this dividend was "retro-active". If the day they announced this, you were thinking about buying the stock this wouldn't effect your decision (unless you were an idiot) because you DON'T GET ANY OF IT!!! It only goes to shareholders who where already holding the stock.
If they wanted to TRY to bolster the stock in some way such as this they would have announced they were paying out this 32 billion over the next 2 years or something. This way there is incentive for you to purchase the stock to participate in this cash disbursment.
They didn't do that, so it has NO EFFECT on potential new investors!!!! Now they also are doing dividends and stock buy backs over four years based on performance. This COULD sway investors, but since it is performance based it only really matters to investors who think MS will perform well. Thus, its only investors who would probably have invested any way.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with the other person who replied to you that "you are clueless";-)
"I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders"
Which is exactly the same as "being scared".
What!!! Well I guess if you consider wanting to be share in the profits of a successful company you have invested in being scared, then OK there are a shit-load of scared investors out there;-)
And their motivation was not solely for the shareholders but to prop up the people who promote the stock based on the fact that MS is a "monopoly" in the OS market - when in fact they've had to admit in their format corporate documents that Linux is a potential threat. That, too, is "being scared."
OK, two things here. First thier motivation. This is a textbook case of exactly how a company should work. Make money and share profits with investors. I've pointed you to references explaining why cash redisributions like this are done in the REAL WORLD, if you have any evidence or reference material explaining your theory please share that with us. Second is about the linux threat. You haven't read many SEC filings have you?;-) Yes, they mention competitors as threats. They also layout threats from natural disasters, death of key employees, currency fluctuations, sales channel disruption, warrent claims, geo-political risks, etc, etc, etc, etc. Every companies SEC 10-K filing is filled with TONS of this stuff. Every company must just be shiting in their pants;-) This is CYA! They have to outline every concievable risk to the company. If they happen to miss any risk and that risk happens to hurt the company in any way, then shareholders have a case for a lawsuit. They have to spell out every possible risk no matter how stupid just to cover themselves. Again, this is in EVERY 10-K FOR EVERY COMPANY WHICH REPORTS TO THE SEC!
And last the predictable (from the uninformed) point about R&D;-) MS spent almost 8 billion in R&D last year (7.7)! Just how much do you want them to spend and on what! I can promise you every avenue of research they think is useful is FULLY funded. So if they had 10 trillion in cash, you think they should just find "something" to spend that on in R&D? Do you think pharmaceutical companies give divendends at the expense of say cancer research? With R&D you cannot just randomly toss money at a problem! You fund a promising area of study and see what happens. If this opens new doors you then fund that, etc, etc, etc. However, you cannot just give a group 500 billion and say I need a cancer cure by next year. It takes time and study. Today we don't even know exactly WHAT needs to be funded to find a solution. We are funding the promising areas and we'll see what comes out of that. Then we'll fund the promising results of the current studies, till we finally get there. YOU CANNOT JUST TOSS UNLIMITED FUNDS INTO R&D AND EXPECT BETTER RESULTS!!!!! All you can do is fully fund the areas which are before you. Anything else is just waste! Of course you think divedends are cheap tricks to fool investors and any responsible company should put 100% of any money in R&D. If they run out of stuff to fund, just maybe buy a shit-load of legos and see what cool designs a few PHDs can can build with them. Sure its not useful, but at least its better than giving anything back to those bastard shareholders;-)
THAT is basic economics 101!
I don't belive for a minute you ever made it to economics 101. If you've ever studied economics, I'm pretty sure you would have flunked out of economics 100;-)
My understanding is that IBM was a "one-stop-shop"- hardware, software, and support. The only thing the customer had to do was write a check each month, and for whatever sum that was, they'd get the mainframe and the engineers to run it. I can't say with certainty, but I'm willing to bet that a signicant chunk of revenue was derived from these services. IBM didn't actually "sell" harware until the early 1980s.
All true. The point I was trying to make is the hardware side was a huge burden. The hardware fabrication side takes huge capital investment (eats cash VERY fast) compared to MS which basically just has to pay employees (no need to refit entire factories for each change in tech). Also, my point about hardware being the back-bone wasn't meant to say they didn't get reveue from software/services (I probably didn't word that very well). It was that hardware was the reason IBM got that revenue. Even though an income-statement would list lots of revenue from software and services, because it was all bundled with the hardware when people started to switch to intel in the server room not only did they lose hardware revenue but also software/services revenue because you only got those with the hardware sales.
They have since smartly changed this so hardware, software, and services are no longer really related. You can get any one of those without requring the others. The whole point wasn't really to show differences in revenue, but the differences in expenses because of the hardware side of the business. These heavy capital expenses requried by the hardware side put much more pressure on IBM and required steady revenue to stay out of trouble. MS doesn't have this same type of high overhead.
I THINK I agree with you, but I'm not REALLY sure what you are suggesting. If you are simply saying MS isn't untouchable, then obviously that is true. I'd argue there never has been and never will be a company which is untouchable.
If you are saying however, that MS's cash reserves are dangerously low (because of huge infrastructure) then I'd strongly disagree. I really don't know how or why you would think that. MS makes WAY more money then they can spend and even with zero growth (or significant negative performance) are in no immediate danger of not being able to cover all expenses just from revenue let alone the huge cash reserves. When people here speculate about effect on MS if stock prices were to collaps (though there is no reason to suspect they would), they seem to think that MS loses tons of money when the stock goes down. This of course is not true. The main dangers of lower stock price are shareholders demanding new management and the company being taken over (another company being able to purchase controlling interest because of low stock price). The biggest financial effect of lower stock price is if a company has high debt or needs more financing (neither of which apply to MS). Yes, it is always bad for a company to have its stock price fall, but its not as financially damaging as some here seem to believe. Here is an explaination.
One other thing worth mentioning about your comparison of IBM and MS. While the situation of IBM when it took its hit, may look similar to MS today on the surface it really isn't THAT similar. Yes, they are both big tech companies, but that is where the substantial similarities end. You must remember at the time IBM was largely a hardware fabrication company. Yes, they did software (hadn't REALLY gotten big in "servies" yet), but the hardware was the back-bone of the company. When looking at company financials this is a HUGE difference. Hardware fabrication is hugely capital intensive. The plants, the equipement, etc cost huge sums. While it is true these are assets the times in which tech changes means these assets depreciate VERY fast and need to be replaced with newer (and normally more expensive) equipment. This model requires much more cash on hand and any change in revenue can have a huge impact. IBM was hit by the tidalwave of cheap PCs and couldn't recoup all teh capital costs associated with the hardware. This lead them into a bit of debt and was causing problems. However, they were big enough to weather the storm, readjust, and come out a very strong company. The point being MS's and IBM's (at the time) underlying financials were VERY different at least in the amount of expense just to keep the company running and the rate of depreciation for those expenditures.
They've already agreed to piss away $37 billion for exactly those reasons - the stockholders were getting scared.
OK, I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to hear this;-) Its OK for tech types not to understand economics or financial markets (hey you cannot know everything), but then don't pretend like you do please.
First, the one-time bulk dividend you are refering to was approx 32 billion not 37 (not really important). Anyway, it will most likely actually be higher than that as that dividend was actually part of a three piece four year plan. Besides the one-time bulk divedend, MS also planned a stock buy-back and an additional raise in normal dividends over a four year period based on performance. This three part plan could equal as much as 75 billion over four years. Now I won't go over the calculations AGAIN, but basically with crazy assumptions to the low side, at the end of the four years MS will still have at least 30 billion in cash (more realistic numbers would have that number much closer to 40 billion).
OK, besides the numbers its important to understand WHY this is being done. No, its not because anyone is scared;-) At the time of this decision, MS had almost 60 billion in cash (56 I believe at last reporting period). Also, at that point its market cap was just below 250 billion. Thats getting close to having 25% of thier market cap just sitting in cash. Another way to look at it is they had about 90 billion in assets on the balance sheet so that about 65% of assets in cash. Not good!!!
Now many will say "how can having that much cash not be good?". And that is a very fair question, and the fact that it isn't certainly can seem counter-intuitive on its face. However, when we all talk about the job of a corporation is to make money, we are talking mainly about making money for its shareholders (not to make the corporation itself rich). Yes, you do need to have some cash on hand (war-chest) and what that amount is, is not easy to calculate. It will depend on industry, company outlook, short and long term plans, etc, etc, etc. Coming up with a number for this is very complicated, but every company should have a target cash-on-hand number (thats what CFOs are for). Again, this number is not easy to calculate, but anyone looking at financials and understanding MS knew they had TOO MUCH cash. They are making money faster then they can spend it and unless they were planning the purcahse of IBM or something, it was just getting rediculous. The job of the corporation is to make money for shareholders and keep itself happy, but historically MS has just horded all of its cash. As a shareholder, I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders.
While you think this was done out of fear, it really points in the opposite direction. When a company sees tough times ahead, they will try to raise thier cash reserves to be able to weather whatever is ahead. The tech industry has traditionally horded cash, because they are young want to be VERY safe (and may not have a "traditional" CFO). This payout if anything shows they are maturing as a company and feel VERY safe. As a rule (of course depending on other factors) you want to hold just enough cash to pay expenses and a nice "war-chest" just in case. In the case of MS, that war-chest was getting rediculous to the point of many seeing it as plain irresponsible. Cash like most other things isn't always more == better.
A very basic explaination about corporations cash. If you want to do more reading on this just google for "too much cash in reserves" and you can find plenty of discussion on this.
Anyway, terminology aside the point I was trying to make is using.NET isn't always the best as it isn't always the way to get the VERY fastest running code. While yes you can use ngen to compile directly to machine code, but what comes out of this complied code will not be (in most cases) as fast as if you'd used C and C++ (which Windows currently does). There is overhead associated with using managed code and for kernal development you often are willing to give up the advantages of managed code for the raw speed of unmanaged code. Even though they are both machine code, the machine code that comes out off C/C++ will almost always be faster than the machine code that comes from managed code.
OK, here is the best I can do with the.NET strategy question while keeping it concise;-)
.NET is the name MS gave its goal of making interoperable systems very simple so you can easily and seemlessly have multiple systems on any platform all working together. This isn't just a MS goal, but.NET is the name they gave it. Besides such an abstract statement, you can look at SOA and XML web-services. Again, these aren't technologies unique to MS but they are examples of the implementation of the.NET strategy.
Now why call this.NET? Thats a good question;-) Many will say.NET is just marketing, and its very true that naming it.NET was marketing. However,.NET is not JUST marketing. The name is marketing, but the underlying strategy and goals are very real (and you can see plenty of implementations today).
The other issue was MS didn't really have any way to accomplish this ".NET strategy" when they came up with it. Luckily, I've never had to try SOA or web services with the VS6 family of tools, but I know those who have and said while it is possible, its one of the more painful things to try. So they needed new tools to enable this strategy. Hense, the.NET Framework. The.NET framework is more than JUST making SOA/web service stuff easier (they really needed to update thier stuff anyway so did that as part of.NET Framework). The.NET Framework does do a good job of making this type of interoperablity very easy. Next they needed tools to build applications for the.NET Framework. Thus, VS.NET was born. VS.NET is simply a very productive set of tools to allow you to build.NET applications.
As part of the.NET Framework was also the CLR/CLI, this allow you to program in basically any.NET langauge (cobol, vb, java, C#, etc, etc, etc). I assume when you talk about "language similar to Java", you mean C#. That is basically an answer MS needed since they REALLY needed a new modern langauge, but hopefully from the above description you can see that C# is just a tiny little spec on top of the whole.NET platform.
MS couldn't be more commited to.NET. There were NEVER any plans to completely re-write Windows in.NET for Longhorn. The vast majority of MS Office is still C++. They have a shit-load of code and are only going re-write in the short-term what makes the most sense. If MS was to try re-writing everything in.NET you wouldn't see anything new from MS for years. There is just too much stuff to update so you'd have to wait years for an update which has no new functionality, its just been rewritten ni.NET. Over time this will happen for most products, but not overnight.
The "nothing of.NET in Longhorn" is a GREAT example of FUD;-) If you are talking about just the Windows kernal, then that is probably true, however Longhorn is a LOT more than its kernal. Basically anything new you've heard about coming in Longhorn (WinFX, Avalone, Indego, etc, etc, etc) rely VERY MUCH on.NET. Almost all new tools/products from MS are.NET. No not all, as.NET isn't the best choice in all cases (sometimes the speed of assembly is worth the effort).
Anyway you don't have to worry about.NET stalling;-) Your developers might wish it would for a bit, as it has been improving so fast it is hard to keep up at times;-)
I can promise you "news" of this story is correct. Longhorn will NOT be written entirely in.NET. However, this story is the first I'd heard that anyone for some reason assumed it would be.
In other breaking "news" MS Office is still written in C++ (the vast majority of it anyway). Longhorn is not a complete re-write of Windows, its just a new version. Sure a lot of the new tools/applications/etc are written in.NET, but it will be a VERY long time (if ever) until you see Windows entirely in.NET. Interpreted byte-code just doesn't tend to lend itself great kernal performance.
Sounds exactly like what MS is doing. Slowly integrating.NET into the OS. I wouldn't hold my breath having the Win kernal in.NET anytime soon;-) However, most (if not all) new functionality, tools are.NET.
Why is one good and the other bad (besides its MS)?
Did MS even MENTION building Longhorn on.NET? No, most (if not all) the new tools and applications are in.NET, but NO WAY will they rewrite all thier apps in.NET any time soon. Office is still almost entirely C++ as well. New stuff is (mostly).NET and old products are getting new functions in.NET and some are slowly being ported over entirely, but it won't be anytime soon.
I don't get it. GP didn't say anything about Sun using Java as the base of its dominate desktop OS, he just said thier next OS. Sun still does produce an OS right? Is this OS writting in Java? No! So whats the big deal?
MS never said they were re-writing all of of Windows in.NET and I have NO idea why some people assumed they were. Most if not all of thier NEW tools and products are based on.NET, but NO WAY are they going to be able to redo everything any time soon. Updated products are getting more and more.NET code in them, but they aren't just tossing out all thier old code to rewrite all thier stuff overnight.
I've been using Skype for a few months and never had a dropped call (some times it might take a couple seconds to synch up). The quality is actually better than many of the landline calls I make (I do a lot of over-seas calls).
That said, I don't think I'd be crazy about it in this situation. For just VOIP, yes in a heart-beat. But since he wants to do so much more and its for a boss who isn't very tech savy, I'd say Skype may not really be called for. Skype is dead simple don't get me wrong, but any video conference/presentation package will also include VOIP so unless the quality in that package REALLY sucks I'd just stick with that to avoid the extra piece of software (for the non-tech boss).
Yes, its not JUST compatiblity lists. Because of the range of hardware they must support even items on those lists can cause trouble depending on hardware/software configurations. And yes, Apple's firm control does limit this. However, I PERSONALLY still prefer the choices. Not saying somenone making another choice is wrong or is an idiot, just saying for myself I choose WixTel.
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2. Pretty unlikely. Cloning the Windows API is not just the mother of all emulation challenges, it's liable to drive the developer insane.
I agree a clone of the WinAPI is VERY unlikely. However, I don't know how needed that is. I'd guess a much more likely scenerio (which would be MUCH easier and have many of the advantages) would be to port Mono to the new Intel based OSX. This wouldn't allow all Windows apps to run, but would certainly at least open the door for Win apps to run relatively easily.
That is for Office 2003 which obviously isn't open. This article is refering to the next version of office. Now many of these restrictions MAY still exist with the next version, but we'll have to wait and see.
;-) Again, we'll have to wait and see, but your above reference doesn't apply to what is being discussed (except to point out past conditions).
Presumably, much of this is going away since they are saying the new version will be open, but what is "open" to MS may not be quite what you'd expect
I think DeLay is exactly what the country really needs right now! We've been divided for so long and Tom can really bring us all together. As a registered republican, I like seeing how most of my republican and democrate friends can come togehter and agree DeLay is a disgrace. Between his actions and spewing about judges, I really feel this is a moment where we can begin the heal as a country and feel like one again over our discust with him.
It really give me hope for the future! Thanks Tom!
You seem passionate about this (and I can respect that) so let me give you a hint. If you want to spin some conspiracy theory about this, you are pointing to the wrong event. While the big one time dividend is really a non-issue, the ongoing smaller dividends could actually have an effect.
MS has traditinally been held in "growth" portfolios. Once a company reaches the size of MS sustaining that growth becomes VERY difficult. MS may well have seen investors droping MS from such "growth" portfolios and wanted another group of investors to pick this up. By offering ongoing dividends, investors can begin to add MS to thier "income" portfolios.
This is actually pretty normal, but I'm sure you can spin this into something evil if you'd like and it would actually have some sound reasoning behind it.
Damn, giving birth to a sun must SUCK!
OK, your funny ;-) I happen to work in an off-shore hedge fund with over 9 billion in assets under management. We've averaged better than 30% annualized ROR since inception (though we hit rough spots during the bust and only managed to 15-20% for a couple years). Also, our main investment methodology is statistical arbitrage so I certainly have no stake in MS. We simply use mathematical models to take advantage of inefficiecies in the market and currently have no major holdings of MS.
;-) Sure institutional investors wouldn't have been upset by getting a nice $50 million dividend from MS, but I can promise that won't produce any "warm fuzzy" feelings the next time they are considering to buy or sell MS! Hell, some investors could have been quite pissed about the dividend. Depending on the investment structure, many will work to limit thier shareholder's tax liablility and in most cases that big dividend would be a big unexpected realized gain in the current period.
That said, I'm sorry for the 101 lecturing but I'm not sure if you can understand anything more as you seem to be struggling with that.
Perhaps you are talking about joe six-pack type investors and perhaps they WOULD somehow be "emotionally" impacted enough by this one time bulk dividend to have that impact thier decision. I really have experience in that level of stupidity. Rule number one to investing, do not make decsions based on emotions!!!!!
However, you HAVE to realize this type of investor has basically zero impact on the market (if I were to be VERY VERY VERY generous maybe 5%). The markets go as the institutional investors go. Period! There are many investing methodologies (well actually a hand full of main methods with a number of variations) and I cannot really think of any which would be affected by a one time bulk dividend like this! If you know anyone who suggests a stock because of a one time dividend, DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY!!!
I am sorry if this is hard to understand, but institutional investors lead the market and they just won't care about such a one time event! Even if your aunt Suzy was really excited by this and wanted to go buy MS because of this news, I can promise you that has no effect.
Again, I ask you to give me any link or reference materials which support your position. If this is such a clear case certainly there are plenty of brokers who have done statistical analysis of how this will effect MS stock price. Hell, I'd be absolutely SHOCKED if you could even find one reputable broker who changed his advice based on this as it JUST DOESN'T MATTER TO ANYONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING! BTW, did you notice MS's stock price had basically no change on very average volume after this was announced? I guess people didn't get quite as excited about this as you'd think, huh.
I assume they are talking about "format" in terms like file system not actually changing how the physical read/writes happen.
Both could be considered formats, but in this case I assume they mean format of the data not the disks pyhsical format (though some past DRM schemes have tried small tweaks to the physical format like placing bits where a CD burner cannot normally write at).
Normally I'm not in favour of municipal wireless, but I'm actually more against having a law banning it.
In most cases I think it would be a stupid waste of money, but in those cases the citizens of that town should make the decision for themselves. At least having this option could be used as a bargining chip if the telcos aren't providing adequate services.
Now I wouldn't really be against a law banning municipal wireless funded with tax dollars. That would seem a fair compromise. I think municipal wireless could be properly done and possibly be great, but if it relies on tax dollars then that is a problem.
I think if municipal wireless is considered, it has to 1) be able to sustain itself 2) not require participation 3) still allow competition. If a municipality really believes they can provide better service for a better price then they should issue municipal bonds to finance the initial up-front costs. This way it is paid for only by those who want it and believe in it. Then the municipal service should not be free, there should be a monthly charge just like any other ISP. That fee should be used to run the project and pay-off the bonds.
Now if this can be done to offer better service for a better price than telcos have nothing to bitch about. If this fails, then its those who thought it was such a good idea who lose and not everyone else.
Sorry to reply again, but I forgot to make one point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems your theory is that MS did this 32 billion bulk dividend to somehow bolster the stock price right?
I just wanted to make sure you realize this dividend was "retro-active". If the day they announced this, you were thinking about buying the stock this wouldn't effect your decision (unless you were an idiot) because you DON'T GET ANY OF IT!!! It only goes to shareholders who where already holding the stock.
If they wanted to TRY to bolster the stock in some way such as this they would have announced they were paying out this 32 billion over the next 2 years or something. This way there is incentive for you to purchase the stock to participate in this cash disbursment.
They didn't do that, so it has NO EFFECT on potential new investors!!!! Now they also are doing dividends and stock buy backs over four years based on performance. This COULD sway investors, but since it is performance based it only really matters to investors who think MS will perform well. Thus, its only investors who would probably have invested any way.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with the other person who replied to you that "you are clueless" ;-)
;-)
;-) Yes, they mention competitors as threats. They also layout threats from natural disasters, death of key employees, currency fluctuations, sales channel disruption, warrent claims, geo-political risks, etc, etc, etc, etc. Every companies SEC 10-K filing is filled with TONS of this stuff. Every company must just be shiting in their pants ;-) This is CYA! They have to outline every concievable risk to the company. If they happen to miss any risk and that risk happens to hurt the company in any way, then shareholders have a case for a lawsuit. They have to spell out every possible risk no matter how stupid just to cover themselves. Again, this is in EVERY 10-K FOR EVERY COMPANY WHICH REPORTS TO THE SEC!
;-) MS spent almost 8 billion in R&D last year (7.7)! Just how much do you want them to spend and on what! I can promise you every avenue of research they think is useful is FULLY funded. So if they had 10 trillion in cash, you think they should just find "something" to spend that on in R&D? Do you think pharmaceutical companies give divendends at the expense of say cancer research? With R&D you cannot just randomly toss money at a problem! You fund a promising area of study and see what happens. If this opens new doors you then fund that, etc, etc, etc. However, you cannot just give a group 500 billion and say I need a cancer cure by next year. It takes time and study. Today we don't even know exactly WHAT needs to be funded to find a solution. We are funding the promising areas and we'll see what comes out of that. Then we'll fund the promising results of the current studies, till we finally get there. YOU CANNOT JUST TOSS UNLIMITED FUNDS INTO R&D AND EXPECT BETTER RESULTS!!!!! All you can do is fully fund the areas which are before you. Anything else is just waste! Of course you think divedends are cheap tricks to fool investors and any responsible company should put 100% of any money in R&D. If they run out of stuff to fund, just maybe buy a shit-load of legos and see what cool designs a few PHDs can can build with them. Sure its not useful, but at least its better than giving anything back to those bastard shareholders ;-)
;-)
"I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders"
Which is exactly the same as "being scared".
What!!! Well I guess if you consider wanting to be share in the profits of a successful company you have invested in being scared, then OK there are a shit-load of scared investors out there
And their motivation was not solely for the shareholders but to prop up the people who promote the stock based on the fact that MS is a "monopoly" in the OS market - when in fact they've had to admit in their format corporate documents that Linux is a potential threat. That, too, is "being scared."
OK, two things here. First thier motivation. This is a textbook case of exactly how a company should work. Make money and share profits with investors. I've pointed you to references explaining why cash redisributions like this are done in the REAL WORLD, if you have any evidence or reference material explaining your theory please share that with us. Second is about the linux threat. You haven't read many SEC filings have you?
And last the predictable (from the uninformed) point about R&D
THAT is basic economics 101!
I don't belive for a minute you ever made it to economics 101. If you've ever studied economics, I'm pretty sure you would have flunked out of economics 100
My understanding is that IBM was a "one-stop-shop"- hardware, software, and support. The only thing the customer had to do was write a check each month, and for whatever sum that was, they'd get the mainframe and the engineers to run it. I can't say with certainty, but I'm willing to bet that a signicant chunk of revenue was derived from these services. IBM didn't actually "sell" harware until the early 1980s.
All true. The point I was trying to make is the hardware side was a huge burden. The hardware fabrication side takes huge capital investment (eats cash VERY fast) compared to MS which basically just has to pay employees (no need to refit entire factories for each change in tech). Also, my point about hardware being the back-bone wasn't meant to say they didn't get reveue from software/services (I probably didn't word that very well). It was that hardware was the reason IBM got that revenue. Even though an income-statement would list lots of revenue from software and services, because it was all bundled with the hardware when people started to switch to intel in the server room not only did they lose hardware revenue but also software/services revenue because you only got those with the hardware sales.
They have since smartly changed this so hardware, software, and services are no longer really related. You can get any one of those without requring the others. The whole point wasn't really to show differences in revenue, but the differences in expenses because of the hardware side of the business. These heavy capital expenses requried by the hardware side put much more pressure on IBM and required steady revenue to stay out of trouble. MS doesn't have this same type of high overhead.
I THINK I agree with you, but I'm not REALLY sure what you are suggesting. If you are simply saying MS isn't untouchable, then obviously that is true. I'd argue there never has been and never will be a company which is untouchable.
If you are saying however, that MS's cash reserves are dangerously low (because of huge infrastructure) then I'd strongly disagree. I really don't know how or why you would think that. MS makes WAY more money then they can spend and even with zero growth (or significant negative performance) are in no immediate danger of not being able to cover all expenses just from revenue let alone the huge cash reserves. When people here speculate about effect on MS if stock prices were to collaps (though there is no reason to suspect they would), they seem to think that MS loses tons of money when the stock goes down. This of course is not true. The main dangers of lower stock price are shareholders demanding new management and the company being taken over (another company being able to purchase controlling interest because of low stock price). The biggest financial effect of lower stock price is if a company has high debt or needs more financing (neither of which apply to MS). Yes, it is always bad for a company to have its stock price fall, but its not as financially damaging as some here seem to believe. Here is an explaination.
One other thing worth mentioning about your comparison of IBM and MS. While the situation of IBM when it took its hit, may look similar to MS today on the surface it really isn't THAT similar. Yes, they are both big tech companies, but that is where the substantial similarities end. You must remember at the time IBM was largely a hardware fabrication company. Yes, they did software (hadn't REALLY gotten big in "servies" yet), but the hardware was the back-bone of the company. When looking at company financials this is a HUGE difference. Hardware fabrication is hugely capital intensive. The plants, the equipement, etc cost huge sums. While it is true these are assets the times in which tech changes means these assets depreciate VERY fast and need to be replaced with newer (and normally more expensive) equipment. This model requires much more cash on hand and any change in revenue can have a huge impact. IBM was hit by the tidalwave of cheap PCs and couldn't recoup all teh capital costs associated with the hardware. This lead them into a bit of debt and was causing problems. However, they were big enough to weather the storm, readjust, and come out a very strong company. The point being MS's and IBM's (at the time) underlying financials were VERY different at least in the amount of expense just to keep the company running and the rate of depreciation for those expenditures.
They've already agreed to piss away $37 billion for exactly those reasons - the stockholders were getting scared.
;-) Its OK for tech types not to understand economics or financial markets (hey you cannot know everything), but then don't pretend like you do please.
;-) At the time of this decision, MS had almost 60 billion in cash (56 I believe at last reporting period). Also, at that point its market cap was just below 250 billion. Thats getting close to having 25% of thier market cap just sitting in cash. Another way to look at it is they had about 90 billion in assets on the balance sheet so that about 65% of assets in cash. Not good!!!
OK, I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to hear this
First, the one-time bulk dividend you are refering to was approx 32 billion not 37 (not really important). Anyway, it will most likely actually be higher than that as that dividend was actually part of a three piece four year plan. Besides the one-time bulk divedend, MS also planned a stock buy-back and an additional raise in normal dividends over a four year period based on performance. This three part plan could equal as much as 75 billion over four years. Now I won't go over the calculations AGAIN, but basically with crazy assumptions to the low side, at the end of the four years MS will still have at least 30 billion in cash (more realistic numbers would have that number much closer to 40 billion).
OK, besides the numbers its important to understand WHY this is being done. No, its not because anyone is scared
Now many will say "how can having that much cash not be good?". And that is a very fair question, and the fact that it isn't certainly can seem counter-intuitive on its face. However, when we all talk about the job of a corporation is to make money, we are talking mainly about making money for its shareholders (not to make the corporation itself rich). Yes, you do need to have some cash on hand (war-chest) and what that amount is, is not easy to calculate. It will depend on industry, company outlook, short and long term plans, etc, etc, etc. Coming up with a number for this is very complicated, but every company should have a target cash-on-hand number (thats what CFOs are for). Again, this number is not easy to calculate, but anyone looking at financials and understanding MS knew they had TOO MUCH cash. They are making money faster then they can spend it and unless they were planning the purcahse of IBM or something, it was just getting rediculous. The job of the corporation is to make money for shareholders and keep itself happy, but historically MS has just horded all of its cash. As a shareholder, I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders.
While you think this was done out of fear, it really points in the opposite direction. When a company sees tough times ahead, they will try to raise thier cash reserves to be able to weather whatever is ahead. The tech industry has traditionally horded cash, because they are young want to be VERY safe (and may not have a "traditional" CFO). This payout if anything shows they are maturing as a company and feel VERY safe. As a rule (of course depending on other factors) you want to hold just enough cash to pay expenses and a nice "war-chest" just in case. In the case of MS, that war-chest was getting rediculous to the point of many seeing it as plain irresponsible. Cash like most other things isn't always more == better.
A very basic explaination about corporations cash. If you want to do more reading on this just google for "too much cash in reserves" and you can find plenty of discussion on this.
Anyway, terminology aside the point I was trying to make is using .NET isn't always the best as it isn't always the way to get the VERY fastest running code. While yes you can use ngen to compile directly to machine code, but what comes out of this complied code will not be (in most cases) as fast as if you'd used C and C++ (which Windows currently does). There is overhead associated with using managed code and for kernal development you often are willing to give up the advantages of managed code for the raw speed of unmanaged code. Even though they are both machine code, the machine code that comes out off C/C++ will almost always be faster than the machine code that comes from managed code.
Sorry, bad terminology ;-)
.NET? Similar concepts on other platforms sometimes cause me to jumble my terminology ;-)
Source code is "compiled" to psudo-code (IL), then when run the CLR JIT compiles to machine code.
Would that be the proper terminology for
Very good point about ngen!
OK, here is the best I can do with the .NET strategy question while keeping it concise ;-)
.NET is the name they gave it. Besides such an abstract statement, you can look at SOA and XML web-services. Again, these aren't technologies unique to MS but they are examples of the implementation of the .NET strategy.
.NET? Thats a good question ;-) Many will say .NET is just marketing, and its very true that naming it .NET was marketing. However, .NET is not JUST marketing. The name is marketing, but the underlying strategy and goals are very real (and you can see plenty of implementations today).
.NET Framework. The .NET framework is more than JUST making SOA/web service stuff easier (they really needed to update thier stuff anyway so did that as part of .NET Framework). The .NET Framework does do a good job of making this type of interoperablity very easy. Next they needed tools to build applications for the .NET Framework. Thus, VS.NET was born. VS.NET is simply a very productive set of tools to allow you to build .NET applications.
.NET Framework was also the CLR/CLI, this allow you to program in basically any .NET langauge (cobol, vb, java, C#, etc, etc, etc). I assume when you talk about "language similar to Java", you mean C#. That is basically an answer MS needed since they REALLY needed a new modern langauge, but hopefully from the above description you can see that C# is just a tiny little spec on top of the whole .NET platform.
.NET is the name MS gave its goal of making interoperable systems very simple so you can easily and seemlessly have multiple systems on any platform all working together. This isn't just a MS goal, but
Now why call this
The other issue was MS didn't really have any way to accomplish this ".NET strategy" when they came up with it. Luckily, I've never had to try SOA or web services with the VS6 family of tools, but I know those who have and said while it is possible, its one of the more painful things to try. So they needed new tools to enable this strategy. Hense, the
As part of the
Please ignore everything you are reading here ;-)
.NET. There were NEVER any plans to completely re-write Windows in .NET for Longhorn. The vast majority of MS Office is still C++. They have a shit-load of code and are only going re-write in the short-term what makes the most sense. If MS was to try re-writing everything in .NET you wouldn't see anything new from MS for years. There is just too much stuff to update so you'd have to wait years for an update which has no new functionality, its just been rewritten ni .NET. Over time this will happen for most products, but not overnight.
.NET in Longhorn" is a GREAT example of FUD ;-) If you are talking about just the Windows kernal, then that is probably true, however Longhorn is a LOT more than its kernal. Basically anything new you've heard about coming in Longhorn (WinFX, Avalone, Indego, etc, etc, etc) rely VERY MUCH on .NET. Almost all new tools/products from MS are .NET. No not all, as .NET isn't the best choice in all cases (sometimes the speed of assembly is worth the effort).
.NET stalling ;-) Your developers might wish it would for a bit, as it has been improving so fast it is hard to keep up at times ;-)
MS couldn't be more commited to
The "nothing of
Anyway you don't have to worry about
I can promise you "news" of this story is correct. Longhorn will NOT be written entirely in .NET. However, this story is the first I'd heard that anyone for some reason assumed it would be.
.NET, but it will be a VERY long time (if ever) until you see Windows entirely in .NET. Interpreted byte-code just doesn't tend to lend itself great kernal performance.
In other breaking "news" MS Office is still written in C++ (the vast majority of it anyway). Longhorn is not a complete re-write of Windows, its just a new version. Sure a lot of the new tools/applications/etc are written in
You realize that is exactly what MS is doing as well right? You also realize they never said they were going to rewrite the entire OS in .NET right?
Sounds exactly like what MS is doing. Slowly integrating .NET into the OS. I wouldn't hold my breath having the Win kernal in .NET anytime soon ;-) However, most (if not all) new functionality, tools are .NET.
Why is one good and the other bad (besides its MS)?
Did MS even MENTION building Longhorn on .NET? No, most (if not all) the new tools and applications are in .NET, but NO WAY will they rewrite all thier apps in .NET any time soon. Office is still almost entirely C++ as well. New stuff is (mostly) .NET and old products are getting new functions in .NET and some are slowly being ported over entirely, but it won't be anytime soon.
I don't get it. GP didn't say anything about Sun using Java as the base of its dominate desktop OS, he just said thier next OS. Sun still does produce an OS right? Is this OS writting in Java? No! So whats the big deal?
.NET and I have NO idea why some people assumed they were. Most if not all of thier NEW tools and products are based on .NET, but NO WAY are they going to be able to redo everything any time soon. Updated products are getting more and more .NET code in them, but they aren't just tossing out all thier old code to rewrite all thier stuff overnight.
MS never said they were re-writing all of of Windows in
Dude!!!!!!! If you are going to post a link to a MS product on /. AT LEAST use the Anonymous Coward option!
I've been using Skype for a few months and never had a dropped call (some times it might take a couple seconds to synch up). The quality is actually better than many of the landline calls I make (I do a lot of over-seas calls).
That said, I don't think I'd be crazy about it in this situation. For just VOIP, yes in a heart-beat. But since he wants to do so much more and its for a boss who isn't very tech savy, I'd say Skype may not really be called for. Skype is dead simple don't get me wrong, but any video conference/presentation package will also include VOIP so unless the quality in that package REALLY sucks I'd just stick with that to avoid the extra piece of software (for the non-tech boss).
Yes, its not JUST compatiblity lists. Because of the range of hardware they must support even items on those lists can cause trouble depending on hardware/software configurations. And yes, Apple's firm control does limit this. However, I PERSONALLY still prefer the choices. Not saying somenone making another choice is wrong or is an idiot, just saying for myself I choose WixTel.