Posts by Eadon
2449 posts • joined Monday 3rd August 2009 06:33 GMT
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Re: "the writing is on the wall for desktop computing."
@Lost all faith - google for the confidential Microsoft Halloween Documents, whereby MS details strategies of its dirty tactics fights against open source - therewithin is the evidence thee seeks.
Nostalgic!
There was nothing quite like playing with Lotus 123! Those old dos programs had a charm of their own, even though the dos command line does not.
Windows 3.1 also had its charms, though I much preferred 95. Looking back, though, wow! It was great to have been there for the evolution. I really liked MS back then. Then they quickly became truly evil, sadly.
Re: "the writing is on the wall for desktop computing."
Notebooks were incredibly popular when they came with Linux. When MS put a stop to that (forbidding OEM's to continue with Linux, as it made windows look bad), notebooks quickly died. It's not the hardware, it's the software that is killing certain platforms.
MS is the kiss of death to platforms these days.
Re: My top tip for Microsoft:
"Turn the clocks back to 2003 and start again"
- With the Metro UI, which resembles (uncannily so) Windows 2.0 - they actually turned the clocks back to 1991.
What's scary about all this is that mobile computing is racing ahead now. MS cannot afford to be a copier of the iPhone. It needs to be leading. But MS are not run by creatives, they are run by business men. These guys are not necessarily of low IQ, but they are unable to think creatively. When they *think* they are being creative, they are simply recreating mistakes that were made long ago - such as the tiles-based interfaces. Or they are taking good ideas and implementing / executing poorly.
In essense, MS kit is soulless, it's like using zombie software :)
There are no top tips for Windows Phone - it's a failed product, like Zune.
How can you sell a device that is
a) Ugly
b) Has no apps
c) Keeps changing so that it is not compatible with the previous version
d) Is useless
e) is windows therefore is insecure
f) it's a closed system (closed app store)
g) it's not an open source system
h) Ms lack that cool factor that appeals to the tweens.
i) In fact, MS lack any factor that appeals to anyone except dorks. (No really!)
MS cannot give it away because they need a cash cow. If they teach people that Windows is free then it's game over. Only Google can do that, because they don't care about money from hardware/software, they want data (though that may be changing).
Microsoft are no google, they cannot make money the way Google do, look at Bing vs Google Search. Google Search is phenomenally profitable, where as Bing loses 2 billion dollars EVERY YEAR!
So MS's strategy of Windows Phone has failed abysmally, it's as simple as that.
Android
Better not be yet another Android manufacturer!
I mean, these kind of profits and market domination are entirely unacceptable!
So argue the Nokia/Elop apologists.
silverlight for streaming
FAIL.
Re: Split Personality Windows 8 Classic vs Metro personality disorder FAIL
Quiet - whining wintards, if I wish to make a pulsar-themed joke at the expense of Windows on an IT forum then I will, and the mewling of my technical inferiors shall not inhibit me!
It's not that the level of intelligence here is stratospheric exactly.
If anyone wants to discuss the physics of pulsars that's fine. I doubt most of you know what neutron matter, or the strong nuclear force, is.
Re: Accounting Tricks
@RyokuMas - sales of Android - 80% of the market approx. Sales of Windows Phone - 0.2% of the market approx. Vendors are welling Win 7 phones at rock bottom bargain bin prices, so it might be gaining some tiny market share. But no one likes Windows Pho 8 - it is selling in peanuts quantities, despite MS pumping billions into TV advertising and the like.
Re: Accounting Tricks
@AC "Where do IBM compete with MS in server space or in desktop" - IBM competes because it is a vendor of Linux Server systems. Also IBM is behind Eclipse and produces Eclipse-based development tools for Java Enterprise systems, which run best on Linux, and can be developed on Linux desktops - which real engineers prefer.
As for the desktop, MS still has a monopoly here, just about but, speculatively, IBM will likely get behind Google Chrome, which is picking up momentum. IBM was stabbed in the back by MS over OS/2 - they are not likely to forget...
Re: Accounting Tricks
@Lost all faith, mea culpla, I should have said million.
Last year CAL licences increaed a whopping 15% and this trend will continue as MS desperately fight to keep losses at bay. "Free" upgrade? Big deal! Linux is free to upgrade and free to use for the first time. Always. (And don't play games confusing licences with support costs, Linux has a much lower TCO).
And why the name calling? You have to resort to name-calling because you know that your argument is Bullshit :)
Split Personality Windows 8 Classic vs Metro personality disorder FAIL
I'm baffled by the split personality of Windows - Classic sans start button vs Metro. Windows 8 is also happens to be a supremely dense ball of crap that is spinning wildly out of control in a void.
Uncanny!
Re: I frequently think Linus is an asshole
Torvalds is like Jobs - not a diplomatic, perhaps, but he's got the vision and he's got the talent. Unlike Jobs, Torvalds is also a seriously seriously good coder. Not that he codes these days, he's too busy coordinating.
And it's not only Linux. Torvalds didn't like the open source source control options, so he wrote Git, which is expanding nicely. You don't get more hardcore Mekon programming genius style than Torvalds.
Re: The end of linux - Says A.C. FUD
OH, how wrong can you be! Cox took a years leave to do an MSc and Linux was fine. One word. Torvalds. Torvalds leads thousands of competent engineers. Cox is brilliant but Linux will be fine, it's going from strength to strength, it is taking over the world.
Re: He stuck to his convictions.
@yossarianuk +1
Re: He stuck to his convictions.
@james Hughes 1 - is that the best you can do? Insult a man who has done more for freedom of software than any other?
Bloody wintards!
Brilliant Engineers use - and code - Linux
And there you have it.
Linux is like a car that racing drivers choose drive.
Fascism / Communism
Anonymity is a human right. Govts are behaving like the Stasi.
Is that less than 147 characters? Maybe it would make a nice tweet.
Accounting Tricks
MS can manipulate the figures, but we're seeing falling profits, one quarter there was a loss due to a write down. (There will be another write down over Skype).
The ship is gradually sinking now. There is no sign that MS can recover from its problems. It cannot grow its cash cows, which are long in the tooth. All it can do is milk its enterprise and government customers with WAY above inflation licence increases. As happened last year. They will be looking to escape the lock-in.
Munich saved 11 billion and counting on moving away from Microsoft to Linux. People have taken note.
MS's new Windows, Win 8, is unpopular. It's Win Pho 7 / 8 strategy has spectacularly failed. It's Surface has failed abysmally. Even ultrabooks are failing, hell even the normal desktop market is going south. (A trend accelerated by mobile computing and Windows 8 being poor).
It's hopeless for MS. Google and Apple are powerful now, IBM are doing fine. So MS is, for the first time, having to compete on merit, especially when the dam of its desktop OEM monopoly finally bursts. Then it's GAME OVER.
Re: Well this is certainly....
@Wallyb132 "Eadon, it was a joke" - apologies, I've spent too much time explaining basics to MSCE types who don't know the difference between a virus and a trojan, let alone what a back door is :)
Posted in Nokia turns a PROFIT. Sort of
It's cooking the books!
MS pay Nokia a billion a quarter to keep its head above water just enough so it can pump out dodgy phones running Windows to give MS some credibility. MS can't let Nokia go bust just yet, it's still picking the twitching corpse of patents.
Then that parasite Elop will get a big bonus from MS for his Nokiacide.
I liked Nokia too. The matter is that there isn't a Nokia Android to tempt coins from my purse!
NOKIA FLOP FAIL!
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@AC - MS were stealing Google's search results - see http://www.directtrafficmedia.co.uk/blog/google-accuses-microsoft-of-stealing-search-results-in-bing-sting-122112518
BING FAIL
Apple has a huge problem
It's visionary keeled over. Now they have a competent manager type in charge, but he's no Jobs, he can't pull new products out of thin air and create a sensation. If he does, I'll be surprised.
I'll wager that the next new big device that will make everyone go mental will be holographic. But that might be some way away, and patents might prevent much innovation now.
Re: I don't think the results are that bad
Nokia got raped by Microsoft.
Re: Intel are struggling
Making the motherboards helps improve your chances of putting your chips into the marketplace obviously. In any case, Intel are struggling, they're CEO is leaving as he has failed to capture the mobile market, to say the least.
Change name
Shouldn't they change there name to sugar daddy?
I'll just get my dirty mac...
selling less disks
Windows 8 is crap. This means means that people are clinging onto their win 7 boxes or even XP boxes. The PC desktop market is moribund. So demand for hard drives will fall - fewer new machines are being sold.
So when demand lowers - you have to lower your prices.
One way or another - Microsoft's incompetence claims more victims...
Re: Well this is certainly....
@Wallyb - you don't need to have tin foil hats and watch out for black helicopters to be suspicious of back doors in software. If you knew anything about software development then you would know that these are common place.
Any software developer knows it's trivial to add a backdoor to software.
ANY closed source software might have secret back doors
The only source code you can be sure does not is open source - AFTER you've inspected it or paid some one else to. But even if you do not personally inspect it, you have more reassurance anyway - for, way with Linux, you can be sure that back doors are less likely to be inserted - they do not get past Torvalds easily, and if they do get inserted, you can bet that geeks will find them instanta.
So there you have it. Closed source software, whether Windows, Apple, Voting software, TSA software, any closed source software may have back doors. Use at great risk.
Our governments systems, which WE pay for with tax, should always be open source systems. For our security. That they are also free and better is just a bonus.
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@hitmouse "I guess they're competing with Apple's similarly closed OS and API arrangements."
- you mean Microsoft are copying Apple. Yes, I agree with you. But what MS did not realise was that the deadliest threat was Android.
In trying to become Apple, MS lost the Mobile wars, permanently. The best Microsoft can do is what they are doing now - to spend several billions per quarter on buying some mobile market share.
Which, as it happens is similar to what they do with Bing. ($2 billion down the drain every year).
Now we have Google chasing the desktop market - (Google Chrome OS) - and some OEMs will be adapting Android for desktop too.
MS's own cash cows (Windows/Office) are under serious threat now. And Windows 8 has already diseased them.
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@hitmouse - yes MS produced a stylus based tablets running Windows in the 2000's and they were unusable, the market ignored them.
Apple brought out a useful tablet that was stylish and sold them lot hot potatoes. Dell was telling everyone that no one wants windows on tablets that needs a stylus, and they were correct.
MSN Search was a copy of other search engines. When Google came along, Microsoft copied Google's look and feel and also their Ad model.
In fact, Bing was sending google search results back to Microsoft and using those to "improve" its own search. Effectively MS was using Google's search results. And everybody laughed when the news got out.
So your argument is less than convincing.
Re: Interesting to note in passing that Elop left after a year at Redmond.
@tomsk - the error in your argument is here: "only stupidity" - it's impossible to be THAT stupid, so occams razor favours conspiracy. It's not exactly an unlikely conspiracy anyway. MS board member joins Nokia, asset strips it of patents etc. and gets it to make Microsoft-only products. To believe that noting untoward was going on, however, requires a certain naivete that I sadly do not possess.
Re: Good article.
@dogged - your link is on a gossip site and says, "several sources we consulted believe that " - and so you believe everything you read on the Internet. Clueless!
Dogged, please stop replying to my posts until you know what you are talking about.
Re: Good article.
@dogged - [iCloud] "The authentication is delivered via AWS but the storage and retrieval is Azure"
Bullshit. Can I see a link that is not to a 2 years old rumour please? Otherwise you are lying or delusional.
Intel are struggling
Intel is withdrawing from an important market. The less power that Intel has, then the more power that ARM has. Things are looking decidedly shaky for CISC.
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@AC " @Eadon - You were complaining the other day that MS surface cost too much to be a serious contender, but now your complaining that it's competing with the OEMs."
@AC MS does cost too much, and MS is competing. This is not inconsistent. At any time, MS could decide to lower the price to garner some sales. It's definitely competition as far as OEM's are concerned. The only question is, how will MS stab the OEMs in the back in the future.
Furthermore, MS are competing on an unlevel playing field, MS don't have to pay licence fees for their OS. And they can use API's for their own kit that they may make unavailable to OEMs. They can tweak Windows to give their own kit an unfair advantage, in terms of speed, features, training their own developers, etc.
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@dogged - "No, it's an improvement over Win7 "
- seriously? Then why has the market rejected Windows 8 on both mobile and desktop? Are you correct and the market somehow wrong?
Less of the name calling, my friend, I prefer to stick to logic than call other posters names personally, but maybe I am old fashioned.
Re: Windows 8 FAIL
@hitmouse - where do you think Microsoft got it's designs for Surface from? It betrayed the OEM's and stole their designs - or aspects of their designs.
The OEMs are furious about this. So it's unlikely that the OEMs will be working as closely with MS in the future.
Microsoft do not provide thought leadership - they copy. They copy google (bing, Azure, Android, Office 365, UI aspects in Office 2013) they copy Apple (Windows, Zune, Win Pho 7/8, Surface, Windows app store and so on) Amazon (Azure), Sony (XBox) et cetera.
And now, with Surface, they have copied their OEM partners. This is not going to end well (for Microsoft).
Tax Dodging corporations
The real issue, when you get Facebook playing 0.13% tax on profits made from your citizens - then what is a mofo to do?
Re: "If Elop was not a Trojan horse, then he would have kept Symbian and Meego alive"
Arctic fox, Elops destruction of Nokia only makes sense if he's a trojan horse, nothing else fits.
Re: Good article.
@dogged MS turnover is a lot higher than you think. 66.6 billion is yearly, Balmer has been in power much much longer than a year, just so you know.
MS is not a serious cloud player. Amazon and Google and others own the cloud market.
iCloud does not run on Azure - that's a myth - you're googling and finding rumours from 2 years ago.
MS will not catch up with Google and Amazon - they're falling further behind each year.
What's consumer choice got to do with it? MS do not give you consumer choice, they force OEM's to market and install windows only.
Another clueless Dogged Fail post. You really should do your homework before embarrassing yourself.
Posted in Microsoft to stream blue movies
Re: The only blue thing Microsoft can do is the Blue Screen Of Death
@AC
"Also all that code contributed to the Linux Kernel by the NSA does what, exactly?"
- I know you're trolling, but... Linux is open source, if some agency does something dodgy - it will be spotted by geeks in no time. And one is free to check the code,or hire someone to check the code, oneself. This is a liberty you do not get with closed source proprietary systems.
Posted in Microsoft to stream blue movies
Re: The only blue thing Microsoft can do is the Blue Screen Of Death
@dogged - haven't you got a window to lick somewhere?
Re: Interesting to note in passing that Elop left after a year at Redmond.
@Arctic fox - occam's razor says that Elop is a Trojan. He has a cosy relationship with MS, who, in exchange for patents, have put Nokia on life support with $1billion per quarter paid to Nokia to keep it building Windows Phones.
If Elop was not a Trojan horse, then he would have kept Symbian and Meego alive and produced an Android phone, and be doing rather well. Whereas now, they making severe losses and their share price is junk value.
Windows 8 FAIL
MS released the Surface RT and even sold it in retail. Well tried to sell it. It failed.
So what are OEM's supposed to do, follow this example?
Surface Pro will repeat the same disaster all over again. Microsoft screwed up, and they have only themselves to blame for two reasons:
1) they are competing with their own OEM partners, thus alienating them. Why build systems that make profits for your own competitor?
2) They produced a rubbish (let's face it, it's rubbish) operating system in Windows 8.
Re: Shaky Ground
@wowfood - If Balmer sued this guy he would create a PR perfect storm disaster, whereby far more people would read the book than otherwise.
Re: Good article.
@dogged, Balmer's job is to create a direction for MS and execute on it. He has failed to do so. It's not just about backing losers, it's about failing to create wealth / shareholder value.
For example, MS are non-players in the cloudy and mobile revolutions. With the cash that Balmer has had to pay with, about a trillion dollars, this is a quite shocking failure.
During his tenure, MS has gone from completely dominant to more or less irrelevant.
@Phil O'Sophical
Yes, my point is that their personalities may be similarly flawed but it's the guys with an engineering creativity and knowledge that are the most successful, as they are far better visionaries. So Jobs had a lousy personality but nevertheless was able to create an amazingly successful operation.
Balmer however lacks this ability to be visionary, he's just ruthless at copying and ripping off others, rather than creating new markets, as Jobs did.
In any case, Balmer was able to coast on the cashcows that he inherited but he has blown about a trillion dollars and counting during his tenure, whilst leaving MS is a far worse position then when he started.
