On Aug 10, 1:07 pm, Nigel Feltham <nigel.felt...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Phil Da Lick! wrote:
> > Richard Rasker wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/10/office_live_domains_small_biz...
> >> "The company told early adopter customers
> >> of the [Office Live Small
> >> Business (OLSB)] service, who had previously been
> >> promised free website
> >> registrations for life, that from 1 October it
> >> would begin charging
> >> them a $14.95 a year renewal fee for their domains.
> >> Trust Microsoft, get screwed.
This has been the case for 30 years. Microsoft's strategy has always
been to come in with a low-ball price, but with a contract that's
loaded with fish-hooks to make it nearly impossible to get out.
Once the "fish" is "addicted" or "hooked", Microsoft starts reeling in
the cash.
MITS, Commodore, Tandy/Radio Shack, IBM, DBASE, WordPerfect, Corel,
Borland, and thousands of other companies have trusted Microsoft, only
to find themselves "on the hook", turning over as much as 1/2 their
profits to Microsoft.
Part of the reason for this is that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer
retained so much equity interest in the company that they couldn't be
fired. As a result, they could plan strategies 5, 10, even 20 years
in advance, and endure several quarters of lack-luster performance
while they "set the hook".
Most other CEOs have to be so focused on having successful quarters
that they usually don't have the resources to focus on truly long-term
strategies. Some exceptions to this would be IBM, Oracle, Sun, and
HP, who also plan long-term strategies and as a result, have thrived
even during hard times. No accident that these companies are also
much less dependent on Microsoft, partly because they blended Open
Source, Unix, and Linux into their corporate strategies.
> >> Richard Rasker
>
> > "We won't ever charge you"... couple of years later
usually 12 to 18 months.
> > "We?ve made a policy
> > change and will start charging".
It's predictable as rain in Seattle.
Microsoft did the same with BASIC, MS-DOS, WORD, MultiPlan/Excel,
PowerPoint, Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, IIS, NT Server, and
SQL Server.
In each case, initial releases were offered at very low rates, often
with very generous interpretations of "concurrent users", and generous
terms early adopters.
Later, changes in Microsoft's "interpretation" of these same terms
resulted in huge increases in the prices paid by corporations for all
of these technologies. This included OEMs, Software vendors,
Corporate customers, and even retail end-users.
In some cases, such as IE, the money was collected indirectly.
Microsoft used browser history and other statistics collected through
IE, MSN, MSNBC, and other key strategic sites and services to identify
key revenue sources, such as travel, mortgage brokers, cars, and other
key sources of advertising revenue, then created sites like Expedia,
DiTech, CarPoint, and other services, often holding a 25% stake in
"partner companies" to evade any direct regulation of Microsoft in
regulated services such as banking, brokerages, realty, and car dealer
services.
The result has been that for the last 20 years, Microsoft has
collected about 1/4 to 1/2 of what would have been corporate profits
from it's "partners" and "customers" in the form of royalties, client
access licenses, and other fees, partnership interests, and other
services. In some cases, Microsoft not only collects the cash, but
also key valuable information, which it can use to advance it's own
agenda.
> > I think most reasonable people would also know where to file MS's
> > convenant "never to sue".
Not worth the paper it's not written on.
This is part of the key to Microsoft's success. They write "plain
English" user agreements that have misleading phrases like "such
as" (but not limited to), which can later be expanded to mean anything
Microsoft wants it to mean.
Most peaple click the "I agree" button without ever reading the
license, and then discover a year or so later that the contract was
more significant than a car lease agreement, an apartment lease, or
even a home mortgage, and that if they had spoken to a lawyer first,
they would have been advised to never agree to the terms.
Of course, most people don't read, or get legal advise on many of
these other contracts either. Then they are shocked when they find
that their credit card interest has shot up to 29.99% because they
went over their limit by making a payment and a purchase on the same
day (purhases are credited first, then payments and deposits).
> You have to be real dumb to ever trust MS about anything.
> Remember their 'Playsforsure' music store that
> quickly became 'plays unless
> you own an MS ZUNE player' then 'Doesn't Play At All' once the DRM
> activation servers started to get switched off.
Part of this was because the RIAA and MPAA have figured out that DRM
does more damage than good. Skilled pirates can hack around DRM, and
it alienates would-be customers who would legitimately pay a fair
price for reasonable useage terms.
DRM was a knee-jerk reaction to Napster's "you can share your music
with a few (thousand) friends", coupled with Microsoft's desire to
shut down I-tunes and take revenue away from Apple to keep the Mac
with OS/X off retail shelves.
> How long will it be before they start to kill off
> the ability to re-install
> XP and run it for more than 30 days by
> turning off those activation servers
> as well.
Actually, Microsoft's site specifies that. Usually, it's 6 months
after the release of the SECOND new product, in this case, Windows 7.
Historically, Microsoft has only supported two generations of Windows,
or any other Microsoft product. Exceptions to this include Windows NT
4.0 server, which Microsoft continued to support even after the
release of Windows 2003 server, partly because so many corporate
customers, when pushed to get off of NT 4.0 and spend $10,000 or more
per CPU for Enterprise Edition or Data Center Edition of Windows 2000
or Windows 2003 simply balked and converted those NT4 servers over to
Linux servers, or purchased UNIX based servers instead.
Microosft has now had 3 "flops". Windows NT 3.x, Windows ME, and
Vista. Microsoft has a LOT riding on Windows 7, and it appears that
they still have the biggest problems.
Windows 7 still has memory management and garbage collection issues,
making it unreliable for streaming video or streaming 3D such as
second-life. It still has a very "heavy" schedular, making it much
harder to do efficient multitasking, and it still does not comply with
any published and public standards, making it very difficult and
expensive to efficiently integrate into corporate IT systems.
For the first time in 20 years, Microsoft's license revenues are down
substantially, mainly because of Linux on Netbooks, which forced
Microsoft to price Windows XP much more aggressively, and Netbooks
have been the fastest growing segment of the industry, while desktop
"Tower" PCs have substantially diminished in popularity.
Furthermore, Linux "Appliances" have been doing the work that used to
be done by PCs. Linux and Unix Appliances now do everything from DVD
players to HD TV, to DVRs and Cable boxes, to firewalls, routers, and
WiFi hubs. Some industry analysts have stated that Linux and Unix
appliance unit volumes are approaching 1 billion devices per year,
while PC sales have dropped from 100 million per year to around 75
million per year.
You may not see the little penguin on your desktop, but Linux and Unix
are playing a more and more dominant role in nearly everything you do.
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