over the years, I've seen way too many educators willing to tell students what would be on tests and help the students with "learning" just what's needed to pass the tests. I've also seen large percentages of college students interested only with what is on the test instead of being interested in understanding the concepts and material to rely on a general understanding to pass the exams.
I wonder if they've looked at this with the understanding that students who are taught the test will get better grades, they are not likely to be any better off than a teacher who strives to teach more general concepts or theory and is just a tough teacher.
If they cover this aspect in the reporting great, if not then they should reconsider publishing names until they know more the situation.
there is a "Verify your settings" link in that "Voice and video chat" section and clicking that link expands to show you a video window of what your camera is seeing, a mic level meter and a sound/speaker meter. The mic meter should move when you tap the mic or talk and there's a link to send a ring sound to your speakers to test that.
on my system, all 3 test passed. Well done Google but too bad none of the setup details were mentioned on the digitizor.com page.
login to gmail and go to your "settings", select "chat" from the tabs of things to change and you'll see the "Voice and video chat" section where it'll list the three devices( camera, microphone, speakers ) and the drop down lists should show what devices your system has available. To my surprise, it does list the USB camera and microphone but I have not tested this yet.
while it would be great to have OS native versions of everything, a fully functional and usable browser solution is not a problem. If anything, it should still result in move vendors digging in and supporting GNU/Linux and that should result in more OS native options. If the driver model for ChromeOS is very different from the standard drivers then it might not carry over as much as we'd like. But still, getting vendors to support any GNU/Linux platform is better than what most do now by not supporting it.
but Empathy and Pidgin both did very poorly with device configuration and especially so for USB based mics. I'll see what Google does about this but since I've already setup a few others on Skype because of the device selection issues. It's going to be a tough sell to move them over to Google now they they are already configured and running Skype. With Skype, it just found the USB mic and webcam devices, lists them and easily uses them. I have manually configured a few machines for voice/vid in the past but the USB media device side was just too painful.
good point and valid too. But to be fair, the press doesn't write many stories about nuts, bolts and screws( sold in the billions of units ) but they'll write about nice shiny new cars made up of nuts, bolts, and screws. The point is, utility devices are boring to the press but put something shiny in front of them and they'll gobble it up. Not to mention that most in the media segment are of the artsy-fartsy type and therefore are more likely to side with Apple. Remember, Apple users were constantly fighting just to keep their platform of choice as big businesses constantly tried to consolidate on only Microsoft products. I see so much press coverage as some what of a 'fighting back' consequence of so many years of oppression.
As for Android, it's cool and cheap and every where so it's finding press coverage also.
And BTW, my original post was a jab at the press for putting down the Nexus One. I should have been more obvious but I thought more on/. would have got that.
to enable by default, remote/network based DLL's to automatically be loaded, and then call this a bug in the applications which do basic DLL loading, me thinks something fishy is going on. Is there a way to watch for any and all DLL's loading from outside of the local machine? I'd like to see who might be feeding their application DLL's over the interweb. Legit or not, this sounds like an OS flaw when just loading a data file allows the application processing the data file to suck in DLL's from the location where the data file resided. If the application loaded from that remote location then fine, but we are talking about content, not application code. Sure sounds fishy.
they did it on the phone nobody bought, the Nexus One.
It's funny how a phone which didn't sell well seems to keep showing up in press releases. At least it looks good enough to use in press releases and super computers so it's got that going for it.
I was thinking along the lines of the Bush/Cheney years of saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And then his connection to the 9/11 attacks. I sure hope the Russians are not as stupid as so many Americans were/are or else we could be seeing Russian cruise missiles in coming.
Microsoft signed a deal with the company to pay based on numbers sold and when they started giving it out free to put Netscape out of business, they didn't pay. Microsoft had to be sued to get them to pay for the units shipped even when they had billions in cash. Microsoft even started paying ISP's for IE units shipped to eliminate Netscape Navigator from the market. That was the famous, "kill the baby" tactic.
And 15 years later, Microsoft and IE still suck IMO.
Jane you ignorant slut. FYI, not every company is a monopoly so they don't have the power to control the market and therefore are allowed to make those kinds of deals. Monopolies can not do that. Different game rules when you are a monopoly.
On that bit about AMD, are you kidding? Do you think HP is going to switch 100% of their Intel based systems to AMD? It's not so easy to just change and so many start with a few models first and grow into the product lines.
try Linux on the computer and you might be surprised at how much better it runs. Windows XP was bad enough but if you are talking about Windows Vista or even Windows 7, you're more likely seeing flaws in the OS design instead of hardware problems.
Give LinuxMint.com a try and install it in the Windows partition with WUBI so you don't even have to repartition. When you reboot, you'll see Linux Mint listed as a boot option. I prefer K3B but basero or something like that might do the CD ripping for you.
LoB
Re:why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows
on
The Recovery Disc Rip-Off
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
probably because Microsoft is the one behind this mess. they want you to purchase a new computer with a new copy of Windows or go out and purchase a new licensed CD. They don't want standard Windows installation discs on the market because it is easier to find a product key to use than it is to get a working Windows install CD.
Remember when you got a copy of the standard installation discs with the PC? You could get the OS installation, not a modified and customized imaging-only type of CD but a full installation disc. Microsoft got the idea that if you had that disc, you would install it on many computers even though it was illegal to do so. Then came the custom installation or imaging CD which only worked on your computer or one exactly like it. Windows activation followed and then the elimination of the CD all together and only a recovery partition which was tied to your boot sector so installing Linux or any other OS or boot manager meant your recovery sector was useless.
To follow Microsoft's marketing speak, 'Customers have asked for a simpler way to install Microsoft Windows and we believe putting the software on the fastest media, the hard disk, is what's best for the customer.' It's all bull and more talk to best scrap your wallet clean. IMO
Me, I just download an ISO from ubuntu.com, linuxmint.com, fedoraproject.org, opensuse.org, knoppix.net, etc and move on.
" A 4-inch screen for the iPhone 3GS costs $16." that sounds reasonable.
" 8GB of RAM costs around $15." why on earth would this little device need 8GB of RAM? 512MB at most and 4GB of FLASH would easily work for the storage space.
"Kindle's 6-inch e-ink screen (the Indian tablet looks like a seven-incher to us) costs $60" why would they want to use the expensive e-Ink screen? At most, they could use the Pixel-Q screen technology if they want to make it outdoors readable and from what I read, they don't.
"its PCB is $10" just for the PCB? really
"Throw in another $7.50 for your battery" sounds reasonable to a Li-On battery
"and you're suddenly looking rather over-budget. Where has the bargain basement price come from?" obviously they are not thinking straight about what would really be inside a barebones device. Granted, $35 is a lowball price and more likely to be used only as a low bar to shoot for. Reality will probably bring this up to just under $100 but even then, a $80 7" tablet sold in the millions of units would be an attention getter. Enough so that Microsoft will not let it happen. Windows 7 is _the_ tablet OS and Steve Ballmer said they will dump massive amounts of _effort_ into making this happen and that means MS $$$$$$.
India might just be smarter than you think and what they are looking for is lots of MS $$$$$$ to not do this project.
no, the $100 laptop ended up costing $180 but simpletons like to round up to $800. And if you really wanted to use that "logic" then the joke would be, The $35 tablet will end up costing $100.
FYI, the OLPC jokes are sore spots for many because of how Microsoft and Intel came in and destroyed the customer base for the project with false claims of better products which never existed. It took over a year for the great software company called Microsoft to get Windows XP booting on the XO. But that's about all it could do unless the OLPC doubled the RAM and doubled the CPU. You know, like how the original EeePC hardware ended up all jacked up along with the price after Microsoft paid ASUS those nice marketing kick backs to use Windows XP instead of Linux/OSS.
$35 for a tablet is pretty outrageously cheap and very unlikely. Even a $100 tablet sounds too cheap except when you think of how many millions India could build and distribute. Just like how the original OLPC/$100 laptop project was stated as such with minimum order size of a million units and at least a few countries willing to sign up. Isn't the Kindle now priced at $139? It's all about scale but watch out, because when you talk this kind of scale, Microsoft will come in and want to destroy it unless it's using Windows.
Maybe India is just looking for another tens or hundreds of millions from Microsoft to not doing a cheap Linux based device. Isn't this what happened in Thailand a decade or so ago. I remember HP sold out of those cheap laptops and the Thai government stated to sign up Dell to help cover the demand. Then came Microsoft with some kind of deal and the laptops ended up costing more and got Windows instead of Linux. Too bad US school systems to use this tactic since so many are in dire need of cash these days.
except they have been through the legal system for anti-trust at least three times and every time they get out of it without more than a slap on the back of the hand. They know darn well that when they must go all out to protect Windows, the effects of a legal case against them a decade later is easier to handle than the immediate threat to Windows and almost 75% of their revenue. Without Windows, Microsoft is a sour taste in the history books.
I almost choked on my coffee reading this, "Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales.". WTF does that have to do with anything regarding the ability to sell products into a channel which they do not have _control_ of? The middleman is what has given Microsoft control and maintained sales of Windows on PCs. So Microsoft dumping the middleman is like telling a gunman to dump his weapon.
FYI, the phone is not tied to the desktop PC so Microsoft has no control and therefore their "long and illustrious history" of leverage is worthless. Especially now that Apple and Google have shown companies can make profits in the segment and promises from Microsoft or spoon fed profits via marketing kickbacks have little effect and any of the large vendors.
BTW, how did that Zune do? Dumb concept of an article IMO.
Microsoft still considers it a win if they prevent a complete ownership of a sector/threat such as with the XBox and to some extent Java. A complete loss of the market sector is the worst case and they've never allowed that so far. They've ended markets such as with pen computing in the late '80s and early '90s and that was fine because desktop Windows went unthreatened. The loss of the smartphone segment would be very bad and what would be far worst would be the complete loss in the tablet market. As with the XBox,.NET and others, Microsoft is willing to spend billions annually just to contain the leaders and Ballmer has already said he's willing to do this with Windows Phone 7 and probably included the tablet segment too. Those billions are considered the cost of 'doing business' just like those special marketing funds are used to keep Linux off corporate migration plans. IMO
Ballmer must have read "The Innovators Dilemma" and has, as Bill Gates has before him, threatened and eliminated every threat to their income channel( Windows desktop and server ). They have always spent over a billion dollars per year on projects and marketing specifically targeting new products others have created and they've been successful protecting Windows. They have really never put much effort at all into making products better for customers for the customers sake, it has always been about limiting choice and preventing movement to other products.
They did Pen for Windows to block Go Inc from doing tablet computers in the late '80s and early '90s. They did Internet Explorer and Windows 95 to block IBM Web Explorer and OS/2 initially and then Netscape. Windows NT went from a failed desktop OS to a "Workstation OS" to a server OS to block OS/2 Server. Windows CE to block PalmOS, Xbox to block PS2/PS3, MS.Net to block Java, Silverlight to block Flash. All these things they blocked or limited their growth were already out there, ran on Windows and because they were not tied only to Windows presented a chance of a loss of control and therefore a loss of the Windows monopoly and income stream.
Microsoft has hardly ever had to innovate, they just leveraged the control they had and made something good enough to sell so people thought they were getting something new and improved.
IMO, the iPhone, iPod, and iPad all represent a threat to Microsoft not because they can take away Windows desktop sales but because they show Windows users that a different way to do something can be easy, can work better, and can be fun and enjoyable. Android and ChromeOS are what is keeping Ballmer up at night because they are being targeted across many hardware manufacturers devices and that kind of flood would quickly spread into Windows customers minds of a none Microsoft choice for doing lots of stuff outside of Windows. But, also with very little effort those same systems can do almost all of what Windows does.
Danger, Danger, Will Robinson! Steve Ballmer will be pissing off many because he _must_ spend spend spend to block Android, ChromeOS, and limit Apple iOS growth. So if they give him 3 quarters then he's out in 3 quarters and by then, if he fails to block Android and ChromeOS, Microsoft will be over the edge and headed down a steep slope of losses anyways so he'd welcome to chance to cash out. IMO
the XBox has done pretty well? Are you looking at the profit/loss column or just the units shipped number because they still lose hundreds of millioins each quarter in that division and have had to write off billions just for RRoF so that excludes development costs and all the billions lost so far.
In Microsoft's entire history, they've not made profits off anything which wasn't directly tied to desktop Windows and their only "growth" was with MS Office and then Windows Server. MS Office, like desktop Windows has saturated the market and Windows Server is being limited by open source. So how can they grow and there's not much of any growth in desktop systems? The only thing they have done well is protect that market since it has a 3-5 year purchase cycle and it keeps the money flowing in. Even that is now costing them lots more as they have to make deep cuts in licensing deals to keep customers looking to migrate to open source or as in the netbook segment and the handheld PDA segment before, they had to pay vendors to ship Microsoft product instead of the competitions product.
Lots of Microsoft management would have to be let go before they changed how they thought of products and had a chance of creating something people wanted as opposed to creating things and preventing people from having a choice. They have lost the phone segment because Apple and Android is out there and vendors will not remove those choices from the customers options. But look out for the tablet and netbook segments, Microsoft under Steve Ballmer will do what they've done many many times before and spend lots of Microsoft money making sure the choice is iPad or MSPad unless Google puts a big foot behind Android and ChromeOS. There is the DVR segment which Tivo does pretty good at and Google is about to enter. But on the PC, what can Steve Ballmer or anyone do for Microsoft there? There's little to no growth there so strong arming their current partners to keep Windows significant is all they've got. IMO
the XBox has done pretty well? Are you looking at the profit/loss column or just the units shipped number because they still lose hundreds of millioins each quarter in that division and have had to write off billions just for RRoF so that excludes development costs and all the billions lost so far.
In Microsoft's entire history, they've not made profits off anything which wasn't directly tied to desktop Windows and their only "growth" was with MS Office and then Windows Server. MS Office, like desktop Windows has saturated the market and Windows Server is being limited by open source. So how can they grow and there's not much of any growth in desktop systems? The only thing they have done well is protect that market since it has a 3-5 year purchase cycle and it keeps the money flowing in. Even that is now costing them lots more as they have to make deep cuts in licensing deals to keep customers looking to migrate to open source or as in the netbook segment and the handheld PDA segment before, they had to pay vendors to ship Microsoft product instead of the competitions product.
Lots of Microsoft management would have to be let go before they changed how they thought of products and had a chance of creating something people wanted as opposed to creating things and preventing people from having a choice. They have lost the phone segment because Apple and Android is out there and vendors will not remove those choices from the customers options. But look out for the tablet and netbook segments, Microsoft under Steve Ballmer will do what they've done many many times before and spend lots of Microsoft money making sure the choice is iPad or MSPad unless Google puts a big foot behind Android and ChromeOS. There is the DVR segment which Tivo does pretty good at and Google is about to enter. But on the PC, what can Steve Ballmer or anyone do for Microsoft there? There's little to no growth there so strong arming their current partners to keep Windows significant is all they've got. IMO
LoB
Slashdot Mirror
over the years, I've seen way too many educators willing to tell students what would be on tests and help the students with "learning" just what's needed to pass the tests. I've also seen large percentages of college students interested only with what is on the test instead of being interested in understanding the concepts and material to rely on a general understanding to pass the exams.
I wonder if they've looked at this with the understanding that students who are taught the test will get better grades, they are not likely to be any better off than a teacher who strives to teach more general concepts or theory and is just a tough teacher.
If they cover this aspect in the reporting great, if not then they should reconsider publishing names until they know more the situation.
LoB
there is a "Verify your settings" link in that "Voice and video chat" section and clicking that link expands to show you a video window of what your camera is seeing, a mic level meter and a sound/speaker meter. The mic meter should move when you tap the mic or talk and there's a link to send a ring sound to your speakers to test that.
on my system, all 3 test passed. Well done Google but too bad none of the setup details were mentioned on the digitizor.com page.
LoB
login to gmail and go to your "settings", select "chat" from the tabs of things to change and you'll see the "Voice and video chat" section where it'll list the three devices( camera, microphone, speakers ) and the drop down lists should show what devices your system has available. To my surprise, it does list the USB camera and microphone but I have not tested this yet.
Looks pretty good so far.
LoB
while it would be great to have OS native versions of everything, a fully functional and usable browser solution is not a problem. If anything, it should still result in move vendors digging in and supporting GNU/Linux and that should result in more OS native options. If the driver model for ChromeOS is very different from the standard drivers then it might not carry over as much as we'd like. But still, getting vendors to support any GNU/Linux platform is better than what most do now by not supporting it.
LoB
but Empathy and Pidgin both did very poorly with device configuration and especially so for USB based mics. I'll see what Google does about this but since I've already setup a few others on Skype because of the device selection issues. It's going to be a tough sell to move them over to Google now they they are already configured and running Skype. With Skype, it just found the USB mic and webcam devices, lists them and easily uses them. I have manually configured a few machines for voice/vid in the past but the USB media device side was just too painful.
LoB
good point and valid too. But to be fair, the press doesn't write many stories about nuts, bolts and screws( sold in the billions of units ) but they'll write about nice shiny new cars made up of nuts, bolts, and screws. The point is, utility devices are boring to the press but put something shiny in front of them and they'll gobble it up. Not to mention that most in the media segment are of the artsy-fartsy type and therefore are more likely to side with Apple. Remember, Apple users were constantly fighting just to keep their platform of choice as big businesses constantly tried to consolidate on only Microsoft products. I see so much press coverage as some what of a 'fighting back' consequence of so many years of oppression.
/. would have got that.
As for Android, it's cool and cheap and every where so it's finding press coverage also.
And BTW, my original post was a jab at the press for putting down the Nexus One. I should have been more obvious but I thought more on
LoB
to enable by default, remote/network based DLL's to automatically be loaded, and then call this a bug in the applications which do basic DLL loading, me thinks something fishy is going on. Is there a way to watch for any and all DLL's loading from outside of the local machine? I'd like to see who might be feeding their application DLL's over the interweb. Legit or not, this sounds like an OS flaw when just loading a data file allows the application processing the data file to suck in DLL's from the location where the data file resided. If the application loaded from that remote location then fine, but we are talking about content, not application code. Sure sounds fishy.
LoB
oh, and first post!
LoB
they did it on the phone nobody bought, the Nexus One.
It's funny how a phone which didn't sell well seems to keep showing up in press releases. At least it looks good enough to use in press releases and super computers so it's got that going for it.
LoB
I was thinking along the lines of the Bush/Cheney years of saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And then his connection to the 9/11 attacks. I sure hope the Russians are not as stupid as so many Americans were/are or else we could be seeing Russian cruise missiles in coming.
LoB
Microsoft signed a deal with the company to pay based on numbers sold and when they started giving it out free to put Netscape out of business, they didn't pay. Microsoft had to be sued to get them to pay for the units shipped even when they had billions in cash. Microsoft even started paying ISP's for IE units shipped to eliminate Netscape Navigator from the market. That was the famous, "kill the baby" tactic.
And 15 years later, Microsoft and IE still suck IMO.
LoB
Jane you ignorant slut.
FYI, not every company is a monopoly so they don't have the power to control the market and therefore are allowed to make those kinds of deals. Monopolies can not do that. Different game rules when you are a monopoly.
On that bit about AMD, are you kidding? Do you think HP is going to switch 100% of their Intel based systems to AMD? It's not so easy to just change and so many start with a few models first and grow into the product lines.
LoB
try Linux on the computer and you might be surprised at how much better it runs. Windows XP was bad enough but if you are talking about Windows Vista or even Windows 7, you're more likely seeing flaws in the OS design instead of hardware problems.
Give LinuxMint.com a try and install it in the Windows partition with WUBI so you don't even have to repartition. When you reboot, you'll see Linux Mint listed as a boot option. I prefer K3B but basero or something like that might do the CD ripping for you.
LoB
probably because Microsoft is the one behind this mess. they want you to purchase a new computer with a new copy of Windows or go out and purchase a new licensed CD. They don't want standard Windows installation discs on the market because it is easier to find a product key to use than it is to get a working Windows install CD.
Remember when you got a copy of the standard installation discs with the PC? You could get the OS installation, not a modified and customized imaging-only type of CD but a full installation disc. Microsoft got the idea that if you had that disc, you would install it on many computers even though it was illegal to do so. Then came the custom installation or imaging CD which only worked on your computer or one exactly like it. Windows activation followed and then the elimination of the CD all together and only a recovery partition which was tied to your boot sector so installing Linux or any other OS or boot manager meant your recovery sector was useless.
To follow Microsoft's marketing speak, 'Customers have asked for a simpler way to install Microsoft Windows and we believe putting the software on the fastest media, the hard disk, is what's best for the customer.' It's all bull and more talk to best scrap your wallet clean. IMO
Me, I just download an ISO from ubuntu.com, linuxmint.com, fedoraproject.org, opensuse.org, knoppix.net, etc and move on.
LoB
let's take a quick look at that link:
" A 4-inch screen for the iPhone 3GS costs $16."
that sounds reasonable.
" 8GB of RAM costs around $15."
why on earth would this little device need 8GB of RAM? 512MB at most and 4GB of FLASH would easily work for the storage space.
"Kindle's 6-inch e-ink screen (the Indian tablet looks like a seven-incher to us) costs $60"
why would they want to use the expensive e-Ink screen? At most, they could use the Pixel-Q
screen technology if they want to make it outdoors readable and from what I read, they don't.
"its PCB is $10"
just for the PCB? really
"Throw in another $7.50 for your battery"
sounds reasonable to a Li-On battery
"and you're suddenly looking rather over-budget. Where has the bargain basement price come from?"
obviously they are not thinking straight about what would really be inside a barebones device. Granted, $35 is a lowball price and more likely to be used only as a low bar to shoot for. Reality will probably bring this up to just under $100 but even then, a $80 7" tablet sold in the millions of units would be an attention getter. Enough so that Microsoft will not let it happen. Windows 7 is _the_ tablet OS and Steve Ballmer said they will dump massive amounts of _effort_ into making this happen and that means MS $$$$$$.
India might just be smarter than you think and what they are looking for is lots of MS $$$$$$ to not do this project.
LoB
no, the $100 laptop ended up costing $180 but simpletons like to round up to $800. And if you really wanted to use that "logic" then the joke would be, The $35 tablet will end up costing $100.
FYI, the OLPC jokes are sore spots for many because of how Microsoft and Intel came in and destroyed the customer base for the project with false claims of better products which never existed. It took over a year for the great software company called Microsoft to get Windows XP booting on the XO. But that's about all it could do unless the OLPC doubled the RAM and doubled the CPU. You know, like how the original EeePC hardware ended up all jacked up along with the price after Microsoft paid ASUS those nice marketing kick backs to use Windows XP instead of Linux/OSS.
$35 for a tablet is pretty outrageously cheap and very unlikely. Even a $100 tablet sounds too cheap except when you think of how many millions India could build and distribute. Just like how the original OLPC/$100 laptop project was stated as such with minimum order size of a million units and at least a few countries willing to sign up. Isn't the Kindle now priced at $139? It's all about scale but watch out, because when you talk this kind of scale, Microsoft will come in and want to destroy it unless it's using Windows.
Maybe India is just looking for another tens or hundreds of millions from Microsoft to not doing a cheap Linux based device. Isn't this what happened in Thailand a decade or so ago. I remember HP sold out of those cheap laptops and the Thai government stated to sign up Dell to help cover the demand. Then came Microsoft with some kind of deal and the laptops ended up costing more and got Windows instead of Linux. Too bad US school systems to use this tactic since so many are in dire need of cash these days.
LoB
old news since this is SOP for Microsoft since the '80s. "DOS ain't done until X won't run." this is just the same old MS.
LoB
or explode, I think explode, yes explode at the sound of Kenny Loggins.
LoB
is it just me or does she sound waaaay naive
LoB
except they have been through the legal system for anti-trust at least three times and every time they get out of it without more than a slap on the back of the hand. They know darn well that when they must go all out to protect Windows, the effects of a legal case against them a decade later is easier to handle than the immediate threat to Windows and almost 75% of their revenue. Without Windows, Microsoft is a sour taste in the history books.
LoB
I almost choked on my coffee reading this, "Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales.". WTF does that have to do with anything regarding the ability to sell products into a channel which they do not have _control_ of? The middleman is what has given Microsoft control and maintained sales of Windows on PCs. So Microsoft dumping the middleman is like telling a gunman to dump his weapon.
FYI, the phone is not tied to the desktop PC so Microsoft has no control and therefore their "long and illustrious history" of leverage is worthless. Especially now that Apple and Google have shown companies can make profits in the segment and promises from Microsoft or spoon fed profits via marketing kickbacks have little effect and any of the large vendors.
BTW, how did that Zune do? Dumb concept of an article IMO.
LoB
Microsoft still considers it a win if they prevent a complete ownership of a sector/threat such as with the XBox and to some extent Java. A complete loss of the market sector is the worst case and they've never allowed that so far. They've ended markets such as with pen computing in the late '80s and early '90s and that was fine because desktop Windows went unthreatened. The loss of the smartphone segment would be very bad and what would be far worst would be the complete loss in the tablet market. As with the XBox, .NET and others, Microsoft is willing to spend billions annually just to contain the leaders and Ballmer has already said he's willing to do this with Windows Phone 7 and probably included the tablet segment too. Those billions are considered the cost of 'doing business' just like those special marketing funds are used to keep Linux off corporate migration plans. IMO
LoB
Ballmer must have read "The Innovators Dilemma" and has, as Bill Gates has before him, threatened and eliminated every threat to their income channel( Windows desktop and server ). They have always spent over a billion dollars per year on projects and marketing specifically targeting new products others have created and they've been successful protecting Windows. They have really never put much effort at all into making products better for customers for the customers sake, it has always been about limiting choice and preventing movement to other products.
.Net to block Java, Silverlight to block Flash. All these things they blocked or limited their growth were already out there, ran on Windows and because they were not tied only to Windows presented a chance of a loss of control and therefore a loss of the Windows monopoly and income stream.
They did Pen for Windows to block Go Inc from doing tablet computers in the late '80s and early '90s. They did Internet Explorer and Windows 95 to block IBM Web Explorer and OS/2 initially and then Netscape. Windows NT went from a failed desktop OS to a "Workstation OS" to a server OS to block OS/2 Server. Windows CE to block PalmOS, Xbox to block PS2/PS3, MS
Microsoft has hardly ever had to innovate, they just leveraged the control they had and made something good enough to sell so people thought they were getting something new and improved.
IMO, the iPhone, iPod, and iPad all represent a threat to Microsoft not because they can take away Windows desktop sales but because they show Windows users that a different way to do something can be easy, can work better, and can be fun and enjoyable. Android and ChromeOS are what is keeping Ballmer up at night because they are being targeted across many hardware manufacturers devices and that kind of flood would quickly spread into Windows customers minds of a none Microsoft choice for doing lots of stuff outside of Windows. But, also with very little effort those same systems can do almost all of what Windows does.
Danger, Danger, Will Robinson! Steve Ballmer will be pissing off many because he _must_ spend spend spend to block Android, ChromeOS, and limit Apple iOS growth. So if they give him 3 quarters then he's out in 3 quarters and by then, if he fails to block Android and ChromeOS, Microsoft will be over the edge and headed down a steep slope of losses anyways so he'd welcome to chance to cash out. IMO
LoB
the XBox has done pretty well? Are you looking at the profit/loss column or just the units shipped number because they still lose hundreds of millioins each quarter in that division and have had to write off billions just for RRoF so that excludes development costs and all the billions lost so far.
In Microsoft's entire history, they've not made profits off anything which wasn't directly tied to desktop Windows and their only "growth" was with MS Office and then Windows Server. MS Office, like desktop Windows has saturated the market and Windows Server is being limited by open source. So how can they grow and there's not much of any growth in desktop systems? The only thing they have done well is protect that market since it has a 3-5 year purchase cycle and it keeps the money flowing in. Even that is now costing them lots more as they have to make deep cuts in licensing deals to keep customers looking to migrate to open source or as in the netbook segment and the handheld PDA segment before, they had to pay vendors to ship Microsoft product instead of the competitions product.
Lots of Microsoft management would have to be let go before they changed how they thought of products and had a chance of creating something people wanted as opposed to creating things and preventing people from having a choice. They have lost the phone segment because Apple and Android is out there and vendors will not remove those choices from the customers options. But look out for the tablet and netbook segments, Microsoft under Steve Ballmer will do what they've done many many times before and spend lots of Microsoft money making sure the choice is iPad or MSPad unless Google puts a big foot behind Android and ChromeOS. There is the DVR segment which Tivo does pretty good at and Google is about to enter. But on the PC, what can Steve Ballmer or anyone do for Microsoft there? There's little to no growth there so strong arming their current partners to keep Windows significant is all they've got. IMO
LoB
the XBox has done pretty well? Are you looking at the profit/loss column or just the units shipped number because they still lose hundreds of millioins each quarter in that division and have had to write off billions just for RRoF so that excludes development costs and all the billions lost so far. In Microsoft's entire history, they've not made profits off anything which wasn't directly tied to desktop Windows and their only "growth" was with MS Office and then Windows Server. MS Office, like desktop Windows has saturated the market and Windows Server is being limited by open source. So how can they grow and there's not much of any growth in desktop systems? The only thing they have done well is protect that market since it has a 3-5 year purchase cycle and it keeps the money flowing in. Even that is now costing them lots more as they have to make deep cuts in licensing deals to keep customers looking to migrate to open source or as in the netbook segment and the handheld PDA segment before, they had to pay vendors to ship Microsoft product instead of the competitions product. Lots of Microsoft management would have to be let go before they changed how they thought of products and had a chance of creating something people wanted as opposed to creating things and preventing people from having a choice. They have lost the phone segment because Apple and Android is out there and vendors will not remove those choices from the customers options. But look out for the tablet and netbook segments, Microsoft under Steve Ballmer will do what they've done many many times before and spend lots of Microsoft money making sure the choice is iPad or MSPad unless Google puts a big foot behind Android and ChromeOS. There is the DVR segment which Tivo does pretty good at and Google is about to enter. But on the PC, what can Steve Ballmer or anyone do for Microsoft there? There's little to no growth there so strong arming their current partners to keep Windows significant is all they've got. IMO LoB