On Nov 10, 8:13 pm, Darth Chaos <DarthChaosofR...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 12:02 pm, Dave U. Random <anonym...@anonymitaet-im-
> I figure there will also be a taxpayer-funded bailout of Microsoft.
> There's already been a taxpayer-funded bailout of the credit/banker
> industry, and now there's talk of a taxpayer-funded bailout of the
> American auto industry.
I doubt it. Microsoft is famous for it's huge cash hoard. Microsoft
has been "force-feeding" Vista to the channels by financing the
inventory. It makes revenues and profits look good, but the balance
sheet shows that Microsoft is liquidating assets and taking on debt.
The economy doesn't depend on whether Microsoft continues to get their
80% profit margitns. In fact, it might free up a huge amount of money
if Microsoft DIDN'T get those profit margins - if corporate and
government workstations ran Linux instead of Windows, ran Open Office
instead of Microsoft Office, and if corporate IT departments could
focus more money on revenue generating opportunities.
Microsoft tried to hold up the Internet in the 1990s, they tried to
hold up IRC and chat, they tried to hold up SOA, and they tried to
hold up Grids and Clouds. They held up the industry until they could
be sure of extending their monopoly into each of these new emerging
technologies. Often, they simply hired some third-rate competitor to
steal the technology for them, and then bundle it into their own
products - killing any chance of competition that could fund
commercial competitors.
The abundance of the 1990s was almost entirely due to the fact that
Microsoft was NOT able to monopolize the Web. The use of Trumpet
WinSock and Mosaic and Netscape gave the competition almost a 2 year
jump on Microsoft. Bill Gates dismissed the Internet and delayed the
introduction of Internet technology until Windows 95, and even then,
Web support was sold separately. They didn't integrate it into the
Operating system until Windows 95B in 1996.
The question is: "Do we wait for Microsoft's next version of Windows
- maybe 2-3 years from now, or start switching to OSS and Linux now?
Waiting for Microsoft could mean a Great Depression that would be more
like Civil War reconstruction era than the Great Depression.
Reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1876, during which most of the
country was in economic collapse.
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