Verily I say unto thee, that bbgruff spake thusly:
> - MS seems to have been caught with its pants down.
When have they /not/ been?
I mean, just look at how that whole Internet "fad" panned out.
Or the MP3 revolution.
Or social networking.
Or virtualisation.
Or Web 2.0.
Or HTPC.
Or pretty much any technological revolution, or even mild progression
for that matter, over the last 30 years.
Where was Microsoft?
Last (and worst) as usual.
The only viable products Microsoft has ever had are a crap OS and a crap
office suite, and the only reason they even got started with the former,
is because they lied to IBM about even having an OS - before stealing it
from Gary Kildall via the plagiarist Tim Paterson. They then embarked on
the now infamous racketeering operation that secured their monopoly, and
their ability to sell every other crap product in their stolen portfolio
(whether consumers actually wanted it or not), up to and including their
latest pile of garbage - Vista. The only thing that keeps Microsoft from
sinking like the Titanic is their monopoly, and the only product they'll
ever be able to keep viable is the cornerstone of that monopoly, because
their monopoly tactic is the only angle they have. They certainly cannot
/develop/, and indeed they're on record as admitting they don't even try
to ("Usually Microsoft doesn't develop products, we buy products."), and
every single attempt they've made to break into a new market has failed,
because the same monopoly gambit won't pay off twice, especially in what
are already well established markets.
So where does that leave them?
It leaves them with diminishing cash reserves; a DRM-riddled bloated pig
of an OS that nobody wants (which is so bad that even their monopoly has
failed to prop it up); a dysfunctional office suit that makes even hard-
core Microsoft fanboys recoil in horror (even the slavering Ray Dopez.99
said it was a steaming pile); and plummeting stock in the middle of what
is shaping up to be the worst recession since the Great Depression.
And Microsoft's answer to this crisis? A pitiful rip-off of Apple's "Get
a Mac" campaign (which was ironically even designed on a Mac), that only
serves to remind everyone that:
a) Microsoft is *still* only capable of copying others, especially Apple
b) Even when Microsoft steals a good idea, the result is absolutely crap
c) Microsoft is run by a bunch of unimaginative and very sad losers with
(as Jobs puts it) absolutely no taste whatsoever; no sense of humour;
no game plan beyond their initial racketeering ploy; no sense of what
consumers actually want; and no interest either way, beyond the utter
dedication to greed and megalomaniacal quest for power that motivates
everything they say and do.
Microsoft's "pants" have been down since the day they first walked in to
IBM's offices. It's a permanent and chronic condition in their case. Let
us hope it turns out to be fatal.
No company in history has ever deserved to fail more than Microsoft.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player,
| That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
| And then is heard no more. It is a tale
| Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
| Signifying nothing." ~ Shakespeare
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
19:08:48 up 36 days, 16:21, 5 users, load average: 0.08, 0.05, 0.00
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