Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [ Rex Ballard ] on Saturday 11 November 2006 06:05 \__
> http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P2845/31p45/31p45.asp&guid=
> >> http://tinyurl.com/y8qoto
> >>
> >> Proof that FUD Still Plays a role.
> >
> > No, proof that Microsoft's OEM strong-arm tactics, combined with
> > "Microsoft Authorized Retailer" or "Microsoft Authorized Dealer" -
> > which allows Microsoft to revoke that status, along with permission to
> > sell Microsoft software and appearantly Microsoft PCs, if they don't
> > like the way a retailer does business (such as putting Linux boxes on
> > the same sales floor as the Windows boxes).
> >
> > Perhaps Congress will start some investigatitons into Microsoft's
> > activities. It would be interesting if Bill Gates was indicted AFTER
> > he retires.
>
> I sure believe so. I can't see, however, what they will discover then which
> they don't already know. Moreover, the Government will most likely continue
> to turn a blind eye (boys will be boys) and be driven by under-the-table
> persuasions and mutual/reciprocal benefits and protection.
Keep in mind that Congress can do it's own investigations, and can
essentially "embarass" the Attorney General into taking action. This
has happened a few times in history, usually when the AG was turning a
blind eye to criminal activities. In some cases, congress simply
enacted carefully targeted legislation or gathered facts that proved
that the AG was not enforcing laws already passed by congress.
Congressional investigations have the authority to unseal court records
and documents, they have the authority to revoke immunity when it was
used to obstruct justice, and they have the authority to compel the AG
to explain, in public hearings why this evidence was ignored.
If the target of the investigation has violated a federal law, enacted
by congress, and the DOJ has been informed of these violations, and
failed to investigate or take action, Congress can, in effect, order
the DOJ to take action.
This authority has been abused in the past as well. The McCarthy
Witch-Hunts, where people were ordered to appear before congress and
told to name names or face charges of treason. Howard Hughes was tried
by congress in a public hearing, organized by a congressman who got
huge contributions from a competitor in the airline business.
It may be that congress will be too busy investigating other misdeeds,
like no-bid contracts to Halliburton, and how "Blind" Chaney's "blind
trust" actually is. My guess is that they will be investigating a lot
of things, but Microsoft probably isn't all that high on the list. On
the other hand, they might direct the DOJ to ask for a full extension
of all of the antitrust provisions for another 3 years, until a
Democrat president can hold Microsoft's feet to the fire for contempt
of court again.
Microsoft is above the law, which means there is now law, and
lawlessness will prevail.
> The exception to this might be the point where Microsoft's business culture
> leads to a universal/global backlash (e.g. hatred and embargos) or when
> employees get fired /en masse/, get underpaid or robbed from their promised
> pensions. Sure, his foundation protects him (and Buffett) from taxation and
> his philanthropic agenda often has a hidden agenda...
> Anyhoo, enough ranting...
That's OK, I've done more than my share of Ranting. But I think a lot
of CIOs have been hearing a lot of "ranting" from the CTO, the CFO, the
COO, and CEO, to know that if they sign over a quarter to half the
company's profits over to Microsoft in a "support contract" for Windows
Vista, that he will probably be facing some really nasty consequences
that go beyond just being fired.
Microsoft may be far more aware of how vulnerable they are this time
around. Many companies have reviewed their previous support contracts,
the value they got for the money they spent, and may have decided that
the cost is too high and the benefits too low, and the risks of being
"automatically cut off" when the licenses expire, is just too great.
The fact that they have already gotten heat for the first round of
proposed licenses, tells them almost exactly how many of these
companies will be ready to "pull the plug" if they don't get a deal
they like. These support contracts account for almost 1/5th of
Microsoft's revenue, and Microsoft can't really afford to have
companies switch to their OEM licenses.
Microsoft made a big mistake when they suddenly, and without warning,
decide to deactivate a number of Volume License Managed licenses,
leaving corporate IT departments with windows machines that couldn't be
restored or reimaged, because the license had "expired".
Companies that DON'T have "Linux Migration" programs, and don't have
contingency plans to migrate away from Microsoft could very suddenly
find themselves facing competitors who do have such plans, and who can
funnel money they had been paying to Microsoft, into strategic
competitive strategies.
Microsoft considers Google a threat, not because they have a huge
revenue, but because Google doesn't use Microsoft in their solution.
The lesson of Google is "If you want to leap-frog your competition,
save money on infrastructure by going Linux and OSS, and focus your
resources on strategic technologies which give you a specific
advantage.
Many companies have taken that to heart in the server market, where
Microsoft's revenue growth has been rapidly dwindling.
Given that most companies spent as much as 10 times what they spend on
servers, on workstations and workstation support, it's very likely that
Microsoft will have to face the reality that Linux is going to be on
the corporate desktop, and if they want ANY revenue, they had better
learn to "play nice" with Linux, or the corporate customers could go to
"Linux Only" solutions a lot faster than anyone expects.
I hope for Novell's sake that they made a deal that is based on that
approach.
> To say more on FUD, people say that Macs are easy to use, so if you use it
> and fail then it makes you an idiot.
Macs are easy to use, but they aren't as functional as "standard" Linux
systems. Mac OS/X is a brilliant example of when ergonomics and
artistic flair meet UNIX. OS/X as a tribute to Steve Job's approach to
software as an Art Form rather than simply functional programming.
If you put a fully configured Linux system next to a Mac, you would
quickly see that Linux isn't as "artistic", but it gives you a lot of
"bang for the buck" and it gives you "full freedom of choice" when it
comes to applications. You might have a favorite, or you might find
that different tools within a class do different tasks better than
other tools in the same class.
I can easily see the day when Linux customers buy a machine that has
lots of OSS software, but use "Click-N-Run" (aka Linspire's CNR) to
install commercial applications as well. The CNR functionality might
be provided by the Linux provider, by the OEM, or buy some combination
of the two.
The days of paying triple-digit prices for Office Automation and
Productivity software are rapidly coming to an end, but well-designed
applications with low double digit prices ($10-$30), could sell tens of
millions of copies in a few weeks. And at $10/copy, customers are
probably going to be much more comfortable with buying upgrade versions
(full installations) at full price ($10/copy).
If you had 30 million people buying new versions of your software at
$10/copy even twice a year, you'd be making over $1/2 billion in
revenue. If you had 2-3 such products, you could net over $1 billion
in gross sales, and have customers eagerly coming back for more.
It's not that hard to see people using the CNR model to even offer
$2-$5 programs that are funded through micropayments ( monthely
subscription payment is distributed based on number of items loaded
during the month).
This isn't a new proposition, it was first proposed almost 23 years
ago. I proposed it back in 1983. Microsoft has fought it tooth and
nail and has encouraged models based on "percieved value" pricing,
essentially the belief that they could charge whatever price they
"percieved" that the customer would pay, and charge triple-digit
prices, simply because they had a better marketing and legal
department.
Bill Gates used the same marketing tactics used by drug dealers. When
drug dealers first approach a new prospect, they offer some "free
samples" of a highly addictive drug. Then they get him nicely hooked,
and start charging "full price".
When Microsoft first released Word for Windows (3.0), they offered it
for $100, a fraction of the price being charged by WordPerfect.
Microsoft didn't tell it's competitors about OLE and COM objects,
leaving them to wrestle with Microsoft "foundation classes" which were
much harder to manage.
Later, Microsoft introduced Excel, again at a fraction of the price
being collected by Lotus, and again using intimate knowledge of new
APIs to make sure that their Excel solution worked better than 1-2-3.
They also offered most of the features of Harvard Graphics, knocking
them out of the market as well.
A bit later, Microsoft displaced Corel Draw with PowerPoint.
And once corporate America was "hooked", Microsoft told OEMs that they
could get Windows 3.1 by itself for $100 or they could get Windows 3.1
plus Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) for $150. Keep in
mind that the OEM price for MS-DOS was around $10. But the OEMs were
hooked too.
I remember spending a few years in one town working with drug addicts.
I was so effective at getting them clean, that the local Drug Dealer
wanted me to stop. He offered my a nice "party" with one of his lady
friends, along with a free 8-ball. It was a tempting offer, but I
really wasn't interested in going back down that road.
Eventually, the dealer was arrested, and when I left town, about 400
addicts had stopped using in that part of town. When I came back,
there were over 4,000 addicts who had stopped using in that same area.
Corporate America is "addicted" to Microsoft. They can't imagine not
having Word, Excel VBA macros, and PowerPoint animations. The irony is
that they have been using those same tools for so long that they don't
realize that there are better tools for the job.
Animations are better done on Macromedia Flash, which is supported on
Linux.
Complex number crunching can be done using PERL or AWK, which can be
crunched into CSV files that can be displayed using OpenOffice "Calc".
Quick and Easy access to ANY database, including MySQL, PostgreSQL,
DB2, Oracle, or even SQL-Server, can be done using BASE. And word
processing can be done using a number of WYSIWYG XML or SGML editors,
which allow generation of numerous output formats, including publisher
offset printing ready copy, html, or LaTeX book formats, or just simple
postscript output, which can be converted to PDF. OpenOffice "Writer"
can even save them directly into XML and PDF formats.
The Linux tools also go far beyond mere "desktop publishing" -
preparing a document which is pretty much only intended to be printed -
then forgotten.
Linux tools provide better support for archiving, revision control, and
retrieval. They provide better support for online publishing, and
secure information sharing. Microsoft lets you go where you want to go
today. Linux helps you go where you want to be tomorrow, and 5 years
from now.
> On the contrary, people (who are shills) say that Linux is hard to use.
> Therefore, anyone who uses Linux for the first time will find consolation in
> this stereotype whenever something seems hard.
If you look at most of the rhetoric, it's primarily focused on how
difficult it is to install (on hardware which is documented as
unsupported).
Most OEMs have found effective ways to let people know "this model is
Linux ready".
Most of the IHVs have found effective ways to let people know "This
hardware is Linux ready".
Most Linux distributors have found ways to make it easy to "test drive"
a machine a customer might want to by and have the LiveCD tell them
"This machine is Linux Ready".
And even when you make a bad choice, there is VMWare player and a host
of "appliances" that give those interested in Linux a chance to "get
behind the wheel" of a really good Ubuntu, SUSE, or Fedora system and
not be fettered by anything other than a bit of a delay as the VMWare
image wrestles memory away from Windows. But once the transition is
complete, the VMware image is almost as fast as the native mode Linux
(actually it's about 30% slower, but it's fast enough to give you a
postive experience on a machine with a 1 Ghz processor and 1 gig of
RAM. Even better performance if you have more RAM.
> New users find comfort in
> prejudiced views (or ones that go a decade ago, e.g. "it's for servers and
> command-line only") and blame the software rather than themselves.
The command line is available, but most commercial and high qualty
versions of Linux have plenty of support for GUI interfaces that
eliminate much of the need to go to the command line directly in the
first few days or weeks.
Eventually, the people who like using VBA macros, or like to write
".bat" files to make their jobs easier will find that one-liner command
line routines are very powerful, very fast, and very easy. Many first
get started with tools like "find" and "grep" and before long they are
scripting in Awk or Perl to do their number crunching "inline".
> All in all, it's an ego defence mechanism.
I've gotten to know some of our most aggressive WinTrolls. Most of
them have good reasons for touting Microsoft. DFS writes Visual Basic
scripts to interface SQL-Server or Access and transform the retrieved
content into HTML content. They even use .NET genereator tools to
create ActiveX controls for more "robust" access to the database
(unfortunately also giving more "robust" access into the computer,
since ActiveX must now be enabled an permitted.
Some viruses such as Zotob, spread their viruses by using a signed
certificaate purchased with a stolen credit card. The irony is that,
because the ActiveX controls were signed, the virus passing mechanism
was undetected by antivirus and antispyware. The Ant-Malware could
only detect the installed product. Many viruses use this little
feature to spread the infestation. They then send the ActiveX controls
to other Windows machines, which then install the new activeX control
while the e-mail is being previewed (takes about 5 seconds to load),
and then the ActiveX control downloads a trojan, which downloads the
malware. An e-mail that takes 5 seconds to preview provides a big
enough window to spread a virus to millions of computers.
But really stealthy viruses, can target a particular organization,
going after only users with lots of permissions. They might only
"infest" 20-30 computers, but they could be the computers of a CEO, a
CFO, a district attorney, a special prosecuter, a federal judge, or a
congressional candidate.
It would be interesting to see how many elections and primaries may
have been unfluenced by information collected by viruses and malware.
> Best wishes,
>
> Roy
>
> PS - about that thread on Tune piracy 'taxation', I can recall the
> Netherlands proposing a similar heavy levy on iPod sales. It was about 2
> years ago and I don't know if it even became a reality.
Sony allowed a "tax" on VCRs and Tapes.
There was a "tax" on CD-ROMs and DVD-R media.
The irony is that the "playlist" technology doesn't even exist for
those media, to assure that artists get a proper share of those
"taxes".
> --
> Roy S. Schestowitz | Disclaimer: no SCO code used to generate this post
> http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
> Cpu(s): 19.4% user, 2.6% system, 1.2% nice, 76.8% idle
> http://iuron.com - semantic engine to gather information
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