In my experience, people who steal once tend to do it again...even if they get caught. It becomes a wierd habit. Look at George Bush. He stole the first election and, even thought he got caught, he proceeded to steal another. Software thiefs are much the same.
Good post but I have to criticize one suggestion you make. If you think Apple + Sun = a good gameing system then you're delusional. Neither company knows anything about gaming. Sun's hardware business is slowly failing. Apple probably has some of the right people to build a cool gaming system - industrial designers in particular - but what're they going to use as a graphics API? OpenGL? Please. Sun would bring nothing to the table. Microsoft has built-in assets that gave them somewhat of a leg-up. They know how to build an OS - which lead to the XBOX OS. And they have DirectX, a very powerful graphics API (albeit hard to use).
Ok, I'll chime in on your nonsense...
"They were convicted of using their dominant market share (gained via IBM's entry into the PC business back when Apple and Commodore were the top dogs) to maintain their current market share. The question was, "Why does MS have 95%....", not, "How did they get it?"
Actually, MSFT got their dominant marketshare but taking an existing idea (GUI's) and building an operating system (Windows 3.0 and beyond) that they freely licensed to any hardware company that came down the pike. If you want to go further back in history to the DOS days, MSFT got their dominant marketshare by being smart enough to get IBM to sign a non-exclusive license for DOS...thus freeing MSFT to license the same IP to other hardware companies like Compaq. They may have/likely did extend that market dominance with shady tactics later on...but that was after it was too late for the dolts who didn't have the insight that Gates and crew did. Love 'em or hate 'em, they were the people who had the BUSINESS insight that software was where it's at and, more important, being a PLATFORM provider was REALLY REALLY where it's at.
"When DR-DOS started picking up market share because it provided superior value, Microsoft basically told the computer sellers, "If you want to ship MS-DOS, you can't give the consumer the choice of DR-DOS." Later, when MS-Windows finally took off (with MS-Windows 3.1), this restriction had some serious teeth. Later, they used similar "deals" with the distributors to lock out WordPerfect and WordPerfect Office, which provided superior value to MS-Office."
The only way to argue with this statement is to point out that by the time DR-DOS came around, MSFT was already working on Windows and DOS was soon to become old news. From what I understand MSFT had some pretty shady licensing deals that made it unattractive for OEM's to ship PC's running DR-DOS but that was after it was "too late."
"There was never one time when Microsoft offered "superior value." There was a time when they had an exclusive deal with IBM (the 800-pound gorilla of the day), because IBM as a corporation didn't take the PC market seriously. By the time the PC took off, Microsoft was already firmly entrenched in the distribution channels, whether it was IBM or Compaq or Gateway. Then it turned out that IBM could eventually produce a superior operating system (OS/2), but didn't know how to market it. Gah! Idiots!"
GAH! IDIOT!;) You must be 22 years old. MSFT's success is almost completely due to their offering superior value. Sure, companies could spend 10's of thousands of dollars buying mini-computers (remember them? they were populare when you were in diapers) or they could buy commodity hardware and commodity operating systems (Windows) and spend a fraction. Moving out in time...companies could continue to run Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS...because Lotus didn't have the brains to start building a version of 1-3-3 for Windows soon enough...or they could buy Excel (not a huge innovation, mind you, but easy as hell to use) for a reasonable price and every user in their company could use it even with a high school education (no offense Tony!). Moving out in time to...today. Companies could pay rediculous prices for Oracle for their DB infrastructure or they could choose to buy MSFT SQL Server which is almost as good in every way and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Basically you miss the boat on every point you tried to make. If I didn't have a life I'd footnote my post to give reasonable minds a greater degree of comfort in my points. Instead I think I'll go to bed.
LOL! If you think that many people are MSFT spend time worrying about Apple you're seriously deluded. Let's see...Apple makes nice hardware, has a nifty OS and some cool apps and, don't forget, a very nice portable audio/video player...all of which are a pimple on Microsoft's revenue and profit ass. Apple is a hobby. Microsoft is a business. I'm sure Apple is a source of inspiration for some at MSFT but they're hardly a company to spend sleepless night's thinking about how you "fight" them.
It's a major cop-out to read a story like this and immediately resort to talking about how Mac's are so wonderful and how MSFT is just trying to be as cool as the Mac. I'll put my own spin on it. Apple has it incredibly easy. They're the ultimate closed system (in a way, one might way, their a monopoly). If Microsoft did what Apple does...own the whole system from hardware to OS to applications and charge a hell of a premium for it they could probabl put together a pretty decent system. MSFT took a different...dare I say much more democratic route...by building an operating system that works on literally millions of combinations of hardware. Thousands of different motherboards. Thousands of different video adapters. Thousands of different displays. Uncountable variations. There are hundreds of thousands of applications for Windows that run on all of these combinations of hardware. This is a MUCH MUCH harder challenge than Apple has to deal with in thier walled garden.
Despite that, Windows manages to work pretty well. Most people who don't muck around with their system extensively run Windows without any problem for years on end. They buy PC's for $399 (or less) that are capable of doing more than they will likely ever need. While many of them could choose to buy a Mac (hey, I'm writing this on a brand spanking new iMac (with Intel inside and bootcamp, of course) but not every sucker like me can or wants to pay to hefty price premium.
My point is that I think it's cool that Microsoft is trying to improve the industrial design of the PC. If even a few of the dumb OEM's were smart enough to design a cool form-factor then they'd probably be able to charge a nice price premium and still be able to charge a nice price premium and still sell a good system for less than a mediocre Mac.
My father played Viola as a chile and into college. When he was in college he was introduced to Einstein and ended up getting together with him and some others several times over to play music. Einstein was a violin player and apparently enjoyed getting together with friends and young people to play music. My father, who is no 76, was in his early 20's. He said they never talked about physics or math but that they did talk a lot about music, some politics and some religion. He said Einstein was very fun...good sense of humor...somewhat of a joker...but also very intense and somewhat competitive about music if someone made a mistake.
case...people with nothing better to do with thier time than save thousands of files one at at a time. Please...rate this post flame-bait. I'm beyond disgusted with the low-lives of the computerworld.
If people are using any software illegally then the person/company who wrote it has every right to do what they can to prevent that use. Hopefully MSFT will do this in a way that doesn't compromise privacy but beyond that, more power to them. Pay up to use....Linux or some other OS that you can get without paying.
in this case I'm going to lower my standards and say that EU should go screw itself. This is reason #1, 2 and 3 that the EU will never be able to compete effectively in the world economy - despite their wierd protectionist/subsidization policies (think Airbus). MSFT is not my darling but I truly believe they've bent over backwards to meet their wierd demands. I hope MSFT can find a way to find saner people in the EU to eventually overturn this stupid garbage.
Respectfully,
A normally Europe-loving democrat who is far from a fan-boy of big business
I don't have time to search for the definitive answer to your question but I'm quite sure that the Gates Foundation (without Buffett's additional dollars) is many times larger in real dollars than the Rockefeller and/or Carnegie Foundation. I did find one article that makes reference to this at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:oelJzbzrqKwJ:w ww.wws.princeton.edu/snkatz/papers/HandbookChapter .pdf+Compare+Gates+Foundation+to+Rockefeller+Found ation+real+dollars&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10
Quote: The most dramatic example has to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founded only in 2000, and recently enhanced by a gift of more than $3 billion by its founders. This makes the Gates Foundation, by any measure of historical economic value, the wealthiest foundation in the history of the United States.
I read somewhere a couple of weeks ago thhat the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 dollars would have been somewhere around...maybe $6 billion. When the Gates Foundation is done it will probably be well over $100 billion as it already has an endowment of $26 billion, Buffett's donating another...what is it?...$37 billion or so...and Gates himself has another $40 billion is MSFT stock and other investments.
I have to comment on this statement:
To recap, I said I don't trust the Foundation to do what the masses would want, ie, if put to a vote what would The People opt to do with such collossal resources? Another poster has made the point that charities "compete" to do good, and that having a single mega-charity is a problem because it'll ultimately reflect the biases and priorities of the owners at the time.
Look, I'm far from an elitist...at least in my own mind. I belive in "power tot he people", democracy and, for what it's worth, have never voted Republican. But it's laughable and hilarious to suggest that "the people" would somehow do a better job of deciding how to spend $100 billion than the Gates Foundation. Love 'em or hate 'em, Gates and the people who run his foundation (1) aren't stupid (2) undoubtedly know more about how to effectively spend that kind of money for the betterment of all than "the people" and (3)...well, you're just an idiot. "The people" are good at some things but they're obviously not always the best judge of character (Bush?) or policy (lowering taxes for the riches) so I'd rather Gates Foundation handle this kind of thing than leave it to the whims of the masses.
PS. Get a fucking life.
Who voted this "insightful?" Too many silly statements to summarize so I'll just pick on one of the most obvious.
Nephi said "While they have a near-monopoly on operating systems and office suites, that's the only market in which they have a large, profitable stake."
So...what about SQL Server or Exchange Server? SQL Server alone would be one of the biggest software companies in the world and Exchange isn't super far behind. Both are highly profitable.
I also can't resist tweaking the equally silly suggestion that it is somehow new that the markets MSFT is entering are "already well established"..."crowded even." I have news for you. Almost every market MSFT has ever entered was already established. Spreadsheets? Lotus 1-2-3 was there first. Word processors? There were many before Microsoft Word. There is nothing new about Microsoft entering markets that are already established. That is, in many ways, their specialty: finding profitable markets that others pioneered and competing with decent (but not always the best) products and good (but not always the lowest) prices.
News flash: most users of Excel are not "home users" as you mention. Excel is used primarily in businesses. Hundreds of thousands of them that would not be interested in Google's spreadsheet.
How would you know so much about the pitfalls of developiong apps for Windows if you've never done it?
I've got news for you. Some application errors on Windows occur becasue of fundamental problems with Windows. Most occur because of errors in the application. By far, the most common cause of Windows crashes is bad device drivers. You can say that the design of Windows and the Windows driver model is the cause of the bad drivers - that's partly true. But Windows apps and Windows itself crashes are almost always caused by bad code written by others.
Can you say "double standard." If MSFT integrated this stuff into Windows and gave it away for free many people (but not you I'm sure!) would pull their hair out and complain that they're using their monopoly power to edge out competitors. In this case they're doing the right thing - offering a service that many people need and want and charging what (to this one person) seems a petty reasonable price.
What's to bitch about?
That sound you hear is a little chuckling coming from Redmond. This is Google...the world's leading brand for search (to consumers) and advertising (to their real customes) entering the world of client side software where they don't have their act together. I seriously doubt MSFT is particularly worried about this and, in fact, they may see this as a good thing. This is (as I mentioned above) the beginning of the deterioration of Google's brand. Google Desktop? Intrusive and annoying. Picasa? Mediocre. Google Pack? An embarassment. Google Earth? Interesting but not particularly innovative and slow as all get-out and inferior to comparable products in many ways. Check out http://local.live.com/ and you'll see that even MSFT is leap-frogging Google in Web-based mapping.
The thing Google has going for it is its brand. Google = Search = Good. People like Google search. It works...for the most part. As soon as they started producing stuff like Google Pack they began the inexorable process of screwing their brand. Now people will think...Google = Search = Good - Google = mediocre client software = Google = mediocre. Google Earth is sort of interesting but is slow and behaves in strange ways. Google Pack is just a wierd bundle of stuff with no obvious rhyme nor reason. As someone who is not particularly a Google fan I say - install away on millions of Dell's!
POSP (plain old sharepoint) is probably not the right solution for managing a complex software development team/project. I'm no fan-boy but Microsoft's new "Team System" product includes a collaboration server for source control, team management, requirements management etc. that I think is based on Sharepoint and has rec'd good reviews. I'm sure there are better products out there but I bet there a hell of a lot more expensive.
By significantly do you mean only 90%? Or perhaps you're referring to large organizations that buy licenses that allows them to install on lots of PC's? I know that the retail sales of Windows is negligible.
Not sure if 95% is the exatly right number but it's close. Almost nobody will buy Windows Vista at retail. They'll get it when they buy a new PC. In that case the OEM will make sure the system has the right drivers etc. It's pretty naive to think that you'd be able to install Vista on any old laptop today and have everything work right. It is, by the way, still not final code. That said, I intalled Beta 2 on a Toshiba Portege last night and everything went fine except that initially the built-in wireless didn't work right. The Toshiba has a pretty lame video card so it doesn't support Aero "Glass" but overall the performance was what I'd call passable. That's on a 512 MB system. If I get a new system next year after Vista ships I'll definatel get a gig of ram.
Like I said, I was ranting a bit but to hold up RPM as a sign of great innovation doesn't really convince me. Heck, Microsoft's Cleartype technology is more exciting.
Redhat certainly contributes to the open source community but that's basically like saying Microsoft contributes to the development of Windows...it's in their business interests to do so.
BEGIN RANT.
I'm not the biggest fan of Sun or Java. Java has become, to borrow Scott McNealy's famous description of Windows, a giant hairball. But for Redhat to get on their high horse and complain that Sun has yet to offer Java under an open source license stinks. What has Redhat ever innovated? They take software developed by the open source community, add some tweaks, and sell it for good money. Sun invented Java, spent large amount of money developing it and they can and should do whatever the hell they want with it. If they decide to license the sourcecode freely, great. If they don't, that's their business. Redhat should stick to their knitting...which is leaching off of others innovations.
END RANT
But seriously, I rarely if ever flame on Slashdot but these guys are rediculous. I promise to be more politic next time.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft's historic strength was that they made it very easy (many would say TOO easy) to write software for Windows. Because Windows' genesis was in the pre Internet days, they designed it in a way that made it powerful for developers but insecure. Now that they're finally GETTING IT and making Windows Vista more secure, the people who have been writing software for Windows are going to have to do a little more work to make their stuff work. This is probably all for the best but it may open up opportunities for other platforms during the transition to secure Windows.
Slow to respond long after this thread died but what the heck. Let me disect your reply to my post:
1. You say "We know that lobbying was going on." Ok, so? Lobbying goes on all the time everywhere. As a matter of fact, one might even say that almost everything YOU do is lobbying. My reply to your original post is...lobbying. I'm trying to get a POV across. There is nothing inherently wrong or nefarious about lobbying. Scumbags like Abramoff who break laws aside, it's the way the world works.
2. Then you said "We know their side (which side is that?) engages in all sorts of sleaze." Ok...so what you're saying is, that Jack Abramoff is a sleaze and you imply that, because he was at one point employed by Preston, Gates, Ellis, that somehow Preston, Gates, Ellis is sleazy and, by extension, that Bill Gates and MSFT are sleazy. Riiiiiight. Nice try. I'm sure Preston, Gates, Ellis wishes that they never heard of Abramoff. I doubt very much that anybody employed by the firm condones anything he did. I doubt that Bill Gates (Sr. or Jr.) knew anything about Abramoff being employed by Preston, Gates, Ellis until after the scandal was exposed by the press. If you think your logic makes sense then you're sleazy yourself because some company that you once worked for (HP?) employed somebody who was guilty of a crime and...well, because you were associated with HP then you must also be sleazy. Right? That's patently rediculous. Just as your disengenous rumor-mongering, innuendo filled accusation in your article was rediculous.
Just my personal two cents.
PS. I once worked for a US Senator who voted for the Iraq war. Therefore I'm guilty of war crimes because...well, I used to work for someone who supported an unjust war.
"It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, people who steal once tend to do it again...even if they get caught. It becomes a wierd habit. Look at George Bush. He stole the first election and, even thought he got caught, he proceeded to steal another. Software thiefs are much the same.
Good post but I have to criticize one suggestion you make. If you think Apple + Sun = a good gameing system then you're delusional. Neither company knows anything about gaming. Sun's hardware business is slowly failing. Apple probably has some of the right people to build a cool gaming system - industrial designers in particular - but what're they going to use as a graphics API? OpenGL? Please. Sun would bring nothing to the table. Microsoft has built-in assets that gave them somewhat of a leg-up. They know how to build an OS - which lead to the XBOX OS. And they have DirectX, a very powerful graphics API (albeit hard to use).
Ok, I'll chime in on your nonsense... "They were convicted of using their dominant market share (gained via IBM's entry into the PC business back when Apple and Commodore were the top dogs) to maintain their current market share. The question was, "Why does MS have 95%....", not, "How did they get it?" Actually, MSFT got their dominant marketshare but taking an existing idea (GUI's) and building an operating system (Windows 3.0 and beyond) that they freely licensed to any hardware company that came down the pike. If you want to go further back in history to the DOS days, MSFT got their dominant marketshare by being smart enough to get IBM to sign a non-exclusive license for DOS...thus freeing MSFT to license the same IP to other hardware companies like Compaq. They may have/likely did extend that market dominance with shady tactics later on...but that was after it was too late for the dolts who didn't have the insight that Gates and crew did. Love 'em or hate 'em, they were the people who had the BUSINESS insight that software was where it's at and, more important, being a PLATFORM provider was REALLY REALLY where it's at. "When DR-DOS started picking up market share because it provided superior value, Microsoft basically told the computer sellers, "If you want to ship MS-DOS, you can't give the consumer the choice of DR-DOS." Later, when MS-Windows finally took off (with MS-Windows 3.1), this restriction had some serious teeth. Later, they used similar "deals" with the distributors to lock out WordPerfect and WordPerfect Office, which provided superior value to MS-Office." The only way to argue with this statement is to point out that by the time DR-DOS came around, MSFT was already working on Windows and DOS was soon to become old news. From what I understand MSFT had some pretty shady licensing deals that made it unattractive for OEM's to ship PC's running DR-DOS but that was after it was "too late." "There was never one time when Microsoft offered "superior value." There was a time when they had an exclusive deal with IBM (the 800-pound gorilla of the day), because IBM as a corporation didn't take the PC market seriously. By the time the PC took off, Microsoft was already firmly entrenched in the distribution channels, whether it was IBM or Compaq or Gateway. Then it turned out that IBM could eventually produce a superior operating system (OS/2), but didn't know how to market it. Gah! Idiots!" GAH! IDIOT! ;) You must be 22 years old. MSFT's success is almost completely due to their offering superior value. Sure, companies could spend 10's of thousands of dollars buying mini-computers (remember them? they were populare when you were in diapers) or they could buy commodity hardware and commodity operating systems (Windows) and spend a fraction. Moving out in time...companies could continue to run Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS...because Lotus didn't have the brains to start building a version of 1-3-3 for Windows soon enough...or they could buy Excel (not a huge innovation, mind you, but easy as hell to use) for a reasonable price and every user in their company could use it even with a high school education (no offense Tony!). Moving out in time to...today. Companies could pay rediculous prices for Oracle for their DB infrastructure or they could choose to buy MSFT SQL Server which is almost as good in every way and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Basically you miss the boat on every point you tried to make. If I didn't have a life I'd footnote my post to give reasonable minds a greater degree of comfort in my points. Instead I think I'll go to bed.
LOL! If you think that many people are MSFT spend time worrying about Apple you're seriously deluded. Let's see...Apple makes nice hardware, has a nifty OS and some cool apps and, don't forget, a very nice portable audio/video player...all of which are a pimple on Microsoft's revenue and profit ass. Apple is a hobby. Microsoft is a business. I'm sure Apple is a source of inspiration for some at MSFT but they're hardly a company to spend sleepless night's thinking about how you "fight" them.
PS. Sorry about the typos ("thier" instead of "their") but this lousy Apple wireless keyboard is hard to use. ;)
It's a major cop-out to read a story like this and immediately resort to talking about how Mac's are so wonderful and how MSFT is just trying to be as cool as the Mac. I'll put my own spin on it. Apple has it incredibly easy. They're the ultimate closed system (in a way, one might way, their a monopoly). If Microsoft did what Apple does...own the whole system from hardware to OS to applications and charge a hell of a premium for it they could probabl put together a pretty decent system. MSFT took a different...dare I say much more democratic route...by building an operating system that works on literally millions of combinations of hardware. Thousands of different motherboards. Thousands of different video adapters. Thousands of different displays. Uncountable variations. There are hundreds of thousands of applications for Windows that run on all of these combinations of hardware. This is a MUCH MUCH harder challenge than Apple has to deal with in thier walled garden. Despite that, Windows manages to work pretty well. Most people who don't muck around with their system extensively run Windows without any problem for years on end. They buy PC's for $399 (or less) that are capable of doing more than they will likely ever need. While many of them could choose to buy a Mac (hey, I'm writing this on a brand spanking new iMac (with Intel inside and bootcamp, of course) but not every sucker like me can or wants to pay to hefty price premium. My point is that I think it's cool that Microsoft is trying to improve the industrial design of the PC. If even a few of the dumb OEM's were smart enough to design a cool form-factor then they'd probably be able to charge a nice price premium and still be able to charge a nice price premium and still sell a good system for less than a mediocre Mac.
My father played Viola as a chile and into college. When he was in college he was introduced to Einstein and ended up getting together with him and some others several times over to play music. Einstein was a violin player and apparently enjoyed getting together with friends and young people to play music. My father, who is no 76, was in his early 20's. He said they never talked about physics or math but that they did talk a lot about music, some politics and some religion. He said Einstein was very fun...good sense of humor...somewhat of a joker...but also very intense and somewhat competitive about music if someone made a mistake.
case...people with nothing better to do with thier time than save thousands of files one at at a time. Please...rate this post flame-bait. I'm beyond disgusted with the low-lives of the computerworld.
If people are using any software illegally then the person/company who wrote it has every right to do what they can to prevent that use. Hopefully MSFT will do this in a way that doesn't compromise privacy but beyond that, more power to them. Pay up to use....Linux or some other OS that you can get without paying.
in this case I'm going to lower my standards and say that EU should go screw itself. This is reason #1, 2 and 3 that the EU will never be able to compete effectively in the world economy - despite their wierd protectionist/subsidization policies (think Airbus). MSFT is not my darling but I truly believe they've bent over backwards to meet their wierd demands. I hope MSFT can find a way to find saner people in the EU to eventually overturn this stupid garbage. Respectfully, A normally Europe-loving democrat who is far from a fan-boy of big business
I don't have time to search for the definitive answer to your question but I'm quite sure that the Gates Foundation (without Buffett's additional dollars) is many times larger in real dollars than the Rockefeller and/or Carnegie Foundation. I did find one article that makes reference to this at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:oelJzbzrqKwJ:w ww.wws.princeton.edu/snkatz/papers/HandbookChapter .pdf+Compare+Gates+Foundation+to+Rockefeller+Found ation+real+dollars&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10
Quote: The most dramatic example has to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founded only in 2000, and recently enhanced by a gift of more than $3 billion by its founders. This makes the Gates Foundation, by any measure of historical economic value, the wealthiest foundation in the history of the United States.
I read somewhere a couple of weeks ago thhat the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 dollars would have been somewhere around...maybe $6 billion. When the Gates Foundation is done it will probably be well over $100 billion as it already has an endowment of $26 billion, Buffett's donating another...what is it?...$37 billion or so...and Gates himself has another $40 billion is MSFT stock and other investments.
I have to comment on this statement: To recap, I said I don't trust the Foundation to do what the masses would want, ie, if put to a vote what would The People opt to do with such collossal resources? Another poster has made the point that charities "compete" to do good, and that having a single mega-charity is a problem because it'll ultimately reflect the biases and priorities of the owners at the time. Look, I'm far from an elitist...at least in my own mind. I belive in "power tot he people", democracy and, for what it's worth, have never voted Republican. But it's laughable and hilarious to suggest that "the people" would somehow do a better job of deciding how to spend $100 billion than the Gates Foundation. Love 'em or hate 'em, Gates and the people who run his foundation (1) aren't stupid (2) undoubtedly know more about how to effectively spend that kind of money for the betterment of all than "the people" and (3)...well, you're just an idiot. "The people" are good at some things but they're obviously not always the best judge of character (Bush?) or policy (lowering taxes for the riches) so I'd rather Gates Foundation handle this kind of thing than leave it to the whims of the masses. PS. Get a fucking life.
Who voted this "insightful?" Too many silly statements to summarize so I'll just pick on one of the most obvious.
Nephi said "While they have a near-monopoly on operating systems and office suites, that's the only market in which they have a large, profitable stake."
So...what about SQL Server or Exchange Server? SQL Server alone would be one of the biggest software companies in the world and Exchange isn't super far behind. Both are highly profitable.
I also can't resist tweaking the equally silly suggestion that it is somehow new that the markets MSFT is entering are "already well established"..."crowded even." I have news for you. Almost every market MSFT has ever entered was already established. Spreadsheets? Lotus 1-2-3 was there first. Word processors? There were many before Microsoft Word. There is nothing new about Microsoft entering markets that are already established. That is, in many ways, their specialty: finding profitable markets that others pioneered and competing with decent (but not always the best) products and good (but not always the lowest) prices.
News flash: most users of Excel are not "home users" as you mention. Excel is used primarily in businesses. Hundreds of thousands of them that would not be interested in Google's spreadsheet.
How would you know so much about the pitfalls of developiong apps for Windows if you've never done it? I've got news for you. Some application errors on Windows occur becasue of fundamental problems with Windows. Most occur because of errors in the application. By far, the most common cause of Windows crashes is bad device drivers. You can say that the design of Windows and the Windows driver model is the cause of the bad drivers - that's partly true. But Windows apps and Windows itself crashes are almost always caused by bad code written by others.
Can you say "double standard." If MSFT integrated this stuff into Windows and gave it away for free many people (but not you I'm sure!) would pull their hair out and complain that they're using their monopoly power to edge out competitors. In this case they're doing the right thing - offering a service that many people need and want and charging what (to this one person) seems a petty reasonable price. What's to bitch about?
That sound you hear is a little chuckling coming from Redmond. This is Google...the world's leading brand for search (to consumers) and advertising (to their real customes) entering the world of client side software where they don't have their act together. I seriously doubt MSFT is particularly worried about this and, in fact, they may see this as a good thing. This is (as I mentioned above) the beginning of the deterioration of Google's brand. Google Desktop? Intrusive and annoying. Picasa? Mediocre. Google Pack? An embarassment. Google Earth? Interesting but not particularly innovative and slow as all get-out and inferior to comparable products in many ways. Check out http://local.live.com/ and you'll see that even MSFT is leap-frogging Google in Web-based mapping.
The thing Google has going for it is its brand. Google = Search = Good. People like Google search. It works...for the most part. As soon as they started producing stuff like Google Pack they began the inexorable process of screwing their brand. Now people will think...Google = Search = Good - Google = mediocre client software = Google = mediocre. Google Earth is sort of interesting but is slow and behaves in strange ways. Google Pack is just a wierd bundle of stuff with no obvious rhyme nor reason. As someone who is not particularly a Google fan I say - install away on millions of Dell's!
POSP (plain old sharepoint) is probably not the right solution for managing a complex software development team/project. I'm no fan-boy but Microsoft's new "Team System" product includes a collaboration server for source control, team management, requirements management etc. that I think is based on Sharepoint and has rec'd good reviews. I'm sure there are better products out there but I bet there a hell of a lot more expensive.
By significantly do you mean only 90%? Or perhaps you're referring to large organizations that buy licenses that allows them to install on lots of PC's? I know that the retail sales of Windows is negligible.
Not sure if 95% is the exatly right number but it's close. Almost nobody will buy Windows Vista at retail. They'll get it when they buy a new PC. In that case the OEM will make sure the system has the right drivers etc. It's pretty naive to think that you'd be able to install Vista on any old laptop today and have everything work right. It is, by the way, still not final code. That said, I intalled Beta 2 on a Toshiba Portege last night and everything went fine except that initially the built-in wireless didn't work right. The Toshiba has a pretty lame video card so it doesn't support Aero "Glass" but overall the performance was what I'd call passable. That's on a 512 MB system. If I get a new system next year after Vista ships I'll definatel get a gig of ram.
Like I said, I was ranting a bit but to hold up RPM as a sign of great innovation doesn't really convince me. Heck, Microsoft's Cleartype technology is more exciting. Redhat certainly contributes to the open source community but that's basically like saying Microsoft contributes to the development of Windows...it's in their business interests to do so.
BEGIN RANT. I'm not the biggest fan of Sun or Java. Java has become, to borrow Scott McNealy's famous description of Windows, a giant hairball. But for Redhat to get on their high horse and complain that Sun has yet to offer Java under an open source license stinks. What has Redhat ever innovated? They take software developed by the open source community, add some tweaks, and sell it for good money. Sun invented Java, spent large amount of money developing it and they can and should do whatever the hell they want with it. If they decide to license the sourcecode freely, great. If they don't, that's their business. Redhat should stick to their knitting...which is leaching off of others innovations. END RANT But seriously, I rarely if ever flame on Slashdot but these guys are rediculous. I promise to be more politic next time.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft's historic strength was that they made it very easy (many would say TOO easy) to write software for Windows. Because Windows' genesis was in the pre Internet days, they designed it in a way that made it powerful for developers but insecure. Now that they're finally GETTING IT and making Windows Vista more secure, the people who have been writing software for Windows are going to have to do a little more work to make their stuff work. This is probably all for the best but it may open up opportunities for other platforms during the transition to secure Windows.
Slow to respond long after this thread died but what the heck. Let me disect your reply to my post: 1. You say "We know that lobbying was going on." Ok, so? Lobbying goes on all the time everywhere. As a matter of fact, one might even say that almost everything YOU do is lobbying. My reply to your original post is...lobbying. I'm trying to get a POV across. There is nothing inherently wrong or nefarious about lobbying. Scumbags like Abramoff who break laws aside, it's the way the world works. 2. Then you said "We know their side (which side is that?) engages in all sorts of sleaze." Ok...so what you're saying is, that Jack Abramoff is a sleaze and you imply that, because he was at one point employed by Preston, Gates, Ellis, that somehow Preston, Gates, Ellis is sleazy and, by extension, that Bill Gates and MSFT are sleazy. Riiiiiight. Nice try. I'm sure Preston, Gates, Ellis wishes that they never heard of Abramoff. I doubt very much that anybody employed by the firm condones anything he did. I doubt that Bill Gates (Sr. or Jr.) knew anything about Abramoff being employed by Preston, Gates, Ellis until after the scandal was exposed by the press. If you think your logic makes sense then you're sleazy yourself because some company that you once worked for (HP?) employed somebody who was guilty of a crime and...well, because you were associated with HP then you must also be sleazy. Right? That's patently rediculous. Just as your disengenous rumor-mongering, innuendo filled accusation in your article was rediculous. Just my personal two cents. PS. I once worked for a US Senator who voted for the Iraq war. Therefore I'm guilty of war crimes because...well, I used to work for someone who supported an unjust war. "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."