In comp.os.linux.advocacy, DFS
<nospam@xxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Thu, 5 Oct 2006 18:16:15 -0400
<psfVg.41436$KR1.10002@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
>> Plus the fact that a 20% failure rate is darned piss-poor performance,
>> in most industries. Could one imagine a manufacturing line discarding
>> a fifth of its finished product?
>>
>> Yipes.
>
>
> Unfortunately for you and the cola cabal, it's not a rate that reflects
> negatively on MS; it's the piracy rate.
>
> http://news.softpedia.com/news/WGA-Identified-60-Million-Pirated-Copies-of-Windows-OS-30608.shtml
>
Actually, the counterfeiting rate might be much higher
than 20%. Microsoft's 10-K states $12B in "client revenue"
for the year. If the estimated number of units out there
(server and desktop) is 500 million, with a lifetime of
3 years, and the average license is estimated to be $150,
then one gets a revenue of $25B per year.
Lots of handwaving, I know, but last I checked XP was
$99 for the upgrade edition, and $199 for the full.
So that $150 is not far off, and we're looking at a 50%
counterfeit rate.
Very roughly, of course, and the 500M is a complete guess.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml
suggests a number between
68.4M and 168.6M in the year 2000. But that was then.
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/number_of_personal_computers
suggests over a billion, with the US having 300 million
obsolete ones.
Microsoft might very well have a problem. :-)
However, you need to read more carefully; the 20% is
the assumed number of false negatives in a DRM scheme.
For 166M units replaced per year that is 33M computers
that will either have to be corrected online (best case)
or yield a call to Customer Support. Assuming each
call takes 5 minutes to resolve, mostly in convincing
the customer to either cough up more dough or find his
Certificate of Authenticity(tm) or some such, that's 166
million man-minutes if no online scheme is set up, and
maybe 166,000 man-minutes if the online system resolves
99.9% of the cases.
166,000 man-minutes is about 1.4 man-years. So we have
two persons dedicated to nothing but resolving licensing
issues at a bare minimum, at maybe $50K/year.
But that's if they only have to process one case in a thousand.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Woman? What woman?"
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