Microsoft sales fall for first time in 23 years

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: CNN Money

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that declining PC sales hurt revenue, as the software giant reported quarterly sales that fell for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company said sales fell 6% from a year earlier to $13.7 billion, missing analysts' expectations of $14.1 billion.

Meanwhile, the company's net income fell 32% to $2.98 billion, or 33 cents per share, in its third quarter ended March 31.

Results included charges totaling 6 cents per share for job cuts and investments that took place in the quarter. Without the charges, Microsoft earned 39 per share, in line with forecasts by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, which typically exclude one-time items.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/23/technology/microsoft_earnings/index.htm?postversion=2009042316

---

[w4rma]

1. How is that outsourcing your customers' jobs doing for you, Microsuck? (nt)

[BlooInBloo]

2. Oh noes.

[Demeter]

3. NOW It's a Depression!

[carlyhippy]

4. It's that damned VISTA.....that was a real brainfart

VISTA or MOOOOJJJJAAAVVVVEE or whatever they are trying to disguise that program these days. It's the Edsel of the software program world.

[wroberts189]

17. Vista: A big unfunny joke on us .. I blue screen every couple days. nt

[Cronus Protagonist]

28. The best OS they ever made

SO FAR!

[sofa king]

49. I just had a chance to compare a Vista box and my own XP box.

The hardware is a little different and my own computer, The Streetbeater, is faster and overclocked, but with half the memory. It runs XP.

The Streetbeater box is faster and smoother, but it still crashes a lot. Last night I had trouble rendering a high-poly plant and crashed out six times. (That sort of thing is to be expected occasionally when the computer is running at 120% of its rated speed; in the balance, the speed completely eclipses its occasional unreliability. This particular problem had more to do with having only 2 gigs of memory.)

But the Vista box was much slower than can be explained by tweaked hardware, and its crashes were much more frightening. Once, something disabled the taskbar and then shot off to the Internet, doing who knows what. The owner disabled User Account Control and I suspect that doing so makes Vista much, much more vulnerable.

If I can point to one thing that is a total failure, it's that. When users voluntarily expose themselves to risks simply to avoid an annoyance, that annoyance is crippling and unforgivable. And, I'm willing to bet, it will be back with Vista Service Pack 3, or whatever they're calling their "new" operating system in the works.

My overall impression is that Vista is sort of like the French CHAR-B tanks in 1940. Big and unquestionably powerful, but also equally unlikely to reach the battlefield in a timely manner, and likely to have circles run around it by the Panzer Mk II that is XP.

[Regret My New Name]

61. I've skipped Vista myself and plan on going to windows 7...

I've been using the beta of Windows 7 and I'm starting to like it... I should probably take the time to learn what's different between Vista and 7 though.. ehnn

[shanti]

29. exactly!

i'd rather have a 4-year old mac than a pc (which i have)! f*** microsoft!

[lbrtbell]

32. It's the Windows Me for a new generation!

I'm waiting for the next Windows to come out. Vista stinks like the putrid, rotting flesh that passes for Dick Cheney's heart.

[primavera]

45. That's what finally got me to switch to Macs

I tried like crazy to find a new laptop with Windows XP, but, when it became clear that new computers were only being offered with Vista, I decided to hell with them, I'd take my business elsewhere. Actually, though, I'm kind of grateful - if Vista hadn't been such a unmitigated catastrophe, I probably would never have discovered how great Macs are.

[hunter]

5. If they open source their core operating system they will survive.

If they don't they will slowly whither away.

One company can't control the direction computing takes any more: there's too much going on. Entities such as google are too big for Microsoft to buy (for a variety of reasons, including anti-trust concerns) and very significant open source projects can't be bought.

Microsoft needs to be developing applications that are demonstrably better than the other guys and acceptable to trust busting government authorities, especially in Europe. Microsoft's proprietary control of the underlying Windows operating system seems to have become a handicap at this point.

Microsoft has got to make that leap of faith that more eyes and hands on the code of the core windows operating system, and free unencumbered distribution of that operating system, will expand the market for other Microsoft products.

If Microsoft can't do that they'll become dad's Oldsmobile.

[Egnever]

19. Dissagree

It is software that drives Microsoft. Untill another OS comes along with the same variety of apps available they will remain king.

[Angleae]

22. Agreed.

People won't move to another OS until the software is there but the software manufacturers won't write software for another OS until the users are there.

[tomreedtoon]

21. Their trade secrets are all they have.

And their "core operating system" is a trade secret, like the secret formula for Coca-Cola. You think they're going to give that up without gunfire?

That being said, yes, Vista is an abortion, and they should be forced to make XP Professional again. And they should only charge $25 for it, tops. That would keep people from installing that bastard tinkertoy Linux and make Windows worth something again.

[Angleae]

23. I believe you mean Vista is an abomination.

One that I will never, ever, ever, ever have. Also their "core operating system" is a little different from Coca-cola's formula in that it is protected by copyrights and patents.

[tomreedtoon]

38. Yes, I agree about Vista, but...

...since no one has seen the operating code of Windows, or knows a damn thing about it, I would not put a "trade secret" past them. Maybe code stolen from somebody long ago. Maybe technology stolen from Apokalyps from under the nose of Great Darkseid. All I know is that human programmers have apparently never been able to reverse-engineer Windows to produce a free version of it. I'd think that would have been the main goal of truly dedicated hackers.

[hunter]

31. People don't know or care what an operating system is or what it does.

Those "trade secrets" have no value in the marketplace anymore. The brand name is the important thing.

Apple switched core hardware and core operating systems twice -- but kept the same "look and feel." Their customers kept coming back.

Opening up the core Windows operating system would be a less radical change than Apple has already accomplished. Microsoft could clean out any proprietary code in Windows they don't have full rights too, write new code to replace it, and they'd be done: an Open Source Windows they could give away for free. Forget the twenty five dollars, forget the activation process, install it on as many computers as you want to. Customers would then have more money in their pocket and greater inclination to spend it on Microsoft applications.

So far as "twisted tinkertoy" code goes, Linux or BSD are probably much cleaner systems than Windows. There's stuff in Windows that looks like this:

kudzu

The wine developers sometimes have a bloody hell of a time emulating it, and I'm pretty sure Microsoft has the same sorts of trouble within their own house.

[tomreedtoon]

37. Your picture shows a holy Wiccan shrine in a wilderness.

I know people who would go nuts over a bright purple crystal in the middle of nature like that. If that is Windows, gimme more of that. Better that than Linux, which is more like Gollum, crawling around with his ugly bits of code muttering insanely, "...my precious, my precious, must upgrade the kernel of my precious..." and never leaving his cave.

ON EDIT: Yes, you're right. People don't care about OS's. They care about programs they can run to do things they want. Windows has perhaps millions of them. Linux has none. Look in the stores and see if you can find anything - Warcraft, Final Cut, cross-stitch design programs - for Linux. (Much as I love my Mac, there's only a few things there for it. It's almost as pathetic as Linux.)

[hunter]

50. People still buy software in stores???

I guess if someone doesn't have a high speed internet connection that makes some sense, but the last software I bought in a box was New Deal Office / Geoworks Ensemble. (I've noticed it's still alive at http://www.breadbox.com.)

All the "productivity" and gaming software I've been using since the late 'seventies runs just fine on my Debian desktop, even all my old Atari 8 bit stuff.

I confess I'm not a gamer. The last game that really had me going was PENGO.

These are some of my old machines living very happily in a Debian virtual reality:



My Macintosh SE/30 running happily in a Debian virtual reality:



My Mac's hard drive died some time ago, but not before I'd made a copy of it.

And yes, there's a Windows 3.1 machine there too...

The days of operating systems in a box are numbered. With virtual machines you can run any O.S. you want to. If you have a web site hosted by godaddy.com or any of the other large providers you are using a virtual machine. I suspect one of the design goals of VISTA was to make it such a hog as to be a nuisance in a world of virtual machines.

BTW, there is a cross stitch program brewing in Linux. I'm sure it's still primitive and probably doesn't have so many features as commercial cross stitch programs... not yet. But it will, and that's the kind of thing Microsoft ought to be worried about. The software world beyond Microsoft's borders is rapidly expanding and Microsoft influence in the software market is shrinking proportionately. If all Microsoft can hold onto is gaming and large office network apps they will be a smaller and much less important company than they are now.

[tomreedtoon]

67. If you're not buying software, you're stealing it.

I do not have any moral qualms on that line...but if you aren't buying software you're not giving any encouragement for anyone to become a programmer.

That is also like what's happening in writing. Stephen King to the contrary, we are rapidly approaching a time where no one will ever be paid anything for writing. Why bother, when you can steal what someone else has been writing on the Internet? Writing will no longer be a paid profession (meaning it won't be respected) and the intellectual quality of writing will nosedive.

So, as with other things, greed and conceit will destroy excellence and quality.

[hunter]

69. Some people get paid to write open source software.

Some people write code for fun or because they want their computers to do something unusual there's no market for.

Long before humans invented money they shared things. A person's status within a community was often determined by how much they gave away without any expectation of return. There were very real returns for generous behavior but there was never any strict accounting of the sharing.

The "intellectual quality" of writing for money generally tends to be hideous; the great bulk of Stephen King's work and any number of trashy but highly marketable novels being a very good example of this.

But art in general -- and writing is an art -- tends not to be something people do for money. Ask a poet, ask a five and a half foot tall basketball player, ask someone who quilts, ask someone with a beautiful garden, ask someone who writes an interesting screen saver or a well crafted bit of fan fiction. The satisfaction people get is in the creation of the the thing itself, and in the sharing of it. There are little or no expectations of financial return.

You can fight against the label of programming as an art, but programming is very similar to writing or drawing or painting. Just as anyone can pick up a pencil and draw, or pick up a paintbrush and paint, or pick up a basketball and shoot it through a hoop, anyone with a computer can sit down in front of a keyboard and write a story about Kirk and Spock in a Jefferies Tube or cobble together a computer program of some sort for sharing on the internet.

My wife and I do buy quite a bit of art, usually things like paintings we see at our county fair, or the music of musicians who do not have any mass market audience. Our house is crammed full of books, we've got more books than the libraries of some public schools I attended. But I rarely purchase software because a lot of commercial software is too rigid, too restrictive, and doesn't let me do what I want to do.

The last Microsoft Operating system I purchased for myself was Windows 98SE. I still have one computer gathering dust in the closet running that. But ever since I've used Debian and Ubuntu. The most obvious reason for my preference is that I can build new machines or rebuild old machines as often as I want and never have to worry about software registrations or activations.

I'm so accustomed to this freedom now I won't touch anything commercial unless someone is paying me, and I don't put anything commercial on my own machines. That's not stealing, that's the honest to goodness ancient and old fashioned art of sharing, and it's a very positive human endeavor.

[tomreedtoon]

70. Starving Artist sales, eh?

Yes, I know about the "Nearly Dead Artists with Leprosy" sales that used to be advertised on TV. Put together in "art mills."

The point is that if work has any quality at all, it should be rewarded with money. And that principle is disappearing in America to day. Disdain Steven King all you want (I don't like his stuff either) he has managed to produce something that people want enough to pay for. But probably not for long.

My point is that it will soon be impossible to earn a living wage by knowing computer programming or even English language. You work will be stolen, or no one will pay you for it. Creativity isn't worth anything in a commercial culture; paying writers has been tolerated for decades, but no more. Businessmen and corporations have been lusting after this day, when writers will have their labor devalued to nothing. And believe it or not, not everyone wants to be the most admired starved-to-death writer in the world.

[lbrtbell]

33. I'm using Linux, but it's not a Tinkertoy

I quite enjoy not having my computer crash several times a day. :)

[tomreedtoon]

36. Do you enjoy no software, weekly kernel changes?

I used to call Linux a model train of an OS, but I'm beginning to think it's more like crystal meth. It wrecks you, it keeps you from doing real work, but you can't shake loose of it.

[Hugin]

39. Open Office works just fine for me on Linux.

:)

[alcibiades_mystery]

42. I don't even get this whole tinker toy nonsense

There are plenty of perfectly serviceable Linux distros; there's also plenty of software to do what you want with it. I would certainly agree that Illustrator CS4 just blows Inkscape out of the water, but GIMP is on par with Photoshop for many, if not most tasks.

It sounds like tomreed is just being a fanatic here. He's certainly correct on the double bind of software apps for Linux, but he takes it to hyperbolic dimensions. There *are* good apps for most of the productive things you would presumably need to do with Windows. Most people could learn a distro like Ubuntu in about a day, at least for basic use (how many people who use Windows do more than a few basic things - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations - with it).

I say this as somebody who likes Windows, and really, I haven't had these problems with Vista that everybody keeps complaining about. I dual boot Vista and (now) Ubuntu 9.04. They both work fine. WINE is a mess, and I still prefer CS4 overall, so I mostly run that in Vista. I also think Office 2007 is one of the best overall upgrades in history: it's a wonderful suite of programs. But Open Office is great, too.

Ultimately, some of these questions are political. I promote free software because I believe in a public commons for information: I'm much more a Stallmanite than a Torvaldian (:-)). Then people like tomreed say "Well, people just want to DO stuff! The politics doesn't matter!" I disagree, but more importantly, I'd like to know who all these people supposedly are who run high-end proprietary apps all daynd perform complex computing tasks. Most people can do their job on Linux, and anyone who denies that is a liar.

[Hugin]

43. All I ask for from any OS is the...

first JMP instruction. After that, it's mostly a useless appendage taking up resources and getting in the way. But, I'm a purist.

That aside... I do like DirectX or maybe I should say, I did like DirectX. It'll soon be messed up.

[personman]

73. Over 26,000 software packages installable with a few clicks

Open Office of course, GIMP which is a free image editing software, WINE which is essentially a windows compatibility layer. Software for music production, programming, many different options for a GUI, many different options for multimedia. Without spending a dime. Compare this to $500+ for versions of windows and office for one computer.

I have 5 computers in the house all running Linux (Kubuntu and Debian). I have one copy of windows for a few windows-only games, but everything else I do, I do in Linux.

-Andy Rink, MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional), former professional technician, web designer and programmer

Anyone interested in trying Linux might want to check out my http://anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=138.html">Kubuntu preview and install guide (w/ pics), and consider giving a Live CD a try.

[Regret My New Name]

62. tinkertoy... grrrrrrrr

DEATH UPON YOU! heh... Most of my servers run linux... Anyway, Windows 7 seems to address most the concerns people had about Vista. Actually, I was under the impression that the Vista service packs addressed most of the problems(although I don't use Vista myself so I can't say if that's true)

[rurallib]

6. So Gates is only worth what now? - $70 billion or so

did you ever think that if Gates lost 99.99% of his money he would still have 7 mill? I think that is right. Whewie.

[paparush]

7. Is Microsoft the GM of software,OS, gaming platform, mp3 player, and the kitchen sink companies?

[Frank Booth]

8. I hope this doesn't continue.

My worst nightmare is having no choice but to use a Mac. I don't think I could stand the constant crashing and enforced coolness.

[ProudDad]

15. Constant Crashing?

Thy name is Windoze!

Windoze is low grade hopeless crap (especially VISTA!? :puke:)

[Deja Q]

54. I'll let you know...

Back before OS X, MacOS was VERY crash-prone and I loathed it.

OS X is said to be rather different and the hardware is specifically chosen and written by Apple. I migrated for practical factors (a slimmer, more effective OS combined with Adobe apps...)

[NJGeek]

9. The cloud is coming...

... expect more of this for MSFT.

Go Google. Go Amazon.

[Deja Q]

57. Trust me, SaaS makes an aaSS out of its users.

Adobe's web-based Photoshop stipulates that, in return for using this online fluff, they get copyright ownership of the image you upload to them...

And you're at the mercy of the cloud company. If internet bandwidth goes down or the servers, you're SOL.

I do like Google sponsoring WINE, but the cloud is too many eggs in one basket. Or haven't you heard about Iran, Asia, Silicon Valley, and likely others when internet connectivity went down?

No, I'm not a luddite. The web is being misused - in ways it's clever, but web based apps are restrictive by nature - - not flexible - - and are dependent on too much to keep them going.

There is a perceived benefit, but most of the songs and dances are aimed at computer illiterates. In a word or two: "Exploiting gullibility".

The web has legitimate uses.

Oh, I haven't mentioned server hacking yet, and Microsoft does have a cozy server platform too. (Hell, some suggested that Vista was made deliberately bad so people would move to their own SaaS products... did the same people read the EULAs?)

[mr11]

10. :0 Damn...I'm sure we can call it a Depression, just like in the 1930's

Microsoft will join everyone else soon GM, Chrysler, Mac, Gotchalks, Mervyns, and those that are yet to join the economy downfalls..how sad:cry:

[onehandle]

11. Apple doing better than ever. More cash on hand than Microsoft. nt

[WriteDown]

18. Ear pacifiers made in China sell well...

I should know, I own one. And it even makes phone calls.

[Egnever]

20. Apples proprietary system is for suckers.

[Cronus Protagonist]

30. It's certainly not for people who are non-conformists!

Mac users are cloned bots who simply repeat Apple slogans ad infinitum, content with their little slice of computing Nirvana, small and unyielding though it is.

[onehandle]

34. Hello time traveler.

How is it back there in 1994? Here in 2009 Apple uses the same chips, ports, and internals that PCs use. In fact PCs adapt some of Apple's technological introductions and vice versa. Is newer and better what you meant by "proprietary?" And you can even dual boot OSX and Windows running both at full speed.

Not that you would want to considering how superior the Mac OS is. I understand that there is somewhat of a lack of software for the Mac back then. Not anymore. And as I said you can run all PC software too.

And yes, virus, trojans, and worms are still the defining characteristic of the PC experience.

Well, enjoy 1994. Don't let Newt take over Congress.

[primavera]

46. I almost never use boot camp

The option of booting up Windows and running Windows software was the clincher that ultimately got me to switch to the Mac, but, now that I've grown accustomed to how much faster and more trouble-free OSX is, I'm extremely reluctant to pull up a Windows program unless I absolutely have to: it's just so slow and cumbersome and buggy by comparison.

[Egnever]

64. Or you could load osx on a pc and spend hundreds less

but hey go ahead and get your branding on the side of your box for your extra $500.

what pray tell did pc's adopt from macs? If you say fire wire I am going to laugh hysterically at you. If you are going to pretend that they design macs to be easily repaired if hardware goes bad like a pc I am also going to laugh at you. The beauty of PC's is the standardization you can choose from a wide variety of hardware and be assured you will be able to plug it in and go. Because apple choses to look cool you are locked into custom hardware designed for the apple form. You can pretend that isn't proprietary but again I will laugh at you. Its similar to what dell does they make Motherboards for their boxes that have non standard anchor holes for the screws which means if that board goes bad you have to buy a new one from them. Fuck any company that pulls that crap and not only does apple do that to their parts but to the freaking music you own as well.

Sorry but you can scream 1994 till you are blue in the face but the truth is APPLES business model is proprietary and they can kiss my 1994 ass.

When they decide to stop trying to be cute and overcharging me for what is now essentially the same hardware then we can talk.

[WriteDown]

75. Odd...

My iphone doesn't seem to work without itunes. Also, I can't get any sync cables that aren't made by Apple and cost 30$(actually, I found a Chinese knockoff for $1.50 a cable, hush though). Apple wouldn't be trying to enforce a monopoly would it?

[Deja Q]

52. What does my liking to suck have to do with anything?

I've used OS X. It grows on you in spirit, it certainly is lean and tells you more technical resource usage than any Windows product on its own, and Adobe supports them.

And they do use higher quality components, at least for the mid-high level entries. It's not all marketing lingo.

[Angleae]

24. But just how much of that is from iPhones, iPods, or iAnythingbutMacintosh

[onehandle]

35. A lot but those devices have enabled Apple to more than triple there market share for Macs.

So much so that Microsoft has started running attack ads against Apple that feature products that Microsoft doesn't even make.

[WriteDown]

76. Monopolistic practices tend to be profitable. nt.

[PBS Poll-435]

12. Sales fell to 13.7 billion dollars

I am crying inside.


:P

[PSPS]

13. Bad economy + Vista blunder = bad news for M$

The big dent in M$ revenue is due to the economy. Every PC sold, regardless of operating system, puts $35 into Microsoft's wallet due to its license agreements. And if my 200 or so corporate clients are any indication, companies have decreased their capital purchasing considerably, especially computers and software.

Add to that the Vista fiasco. Except for diehard MS fans, nobody is voluntarily "upgrading" to Vista. Vista was probably the worst blunder Microsoft has made in its history. And if WIndows 7 RTM is anything like Vista, it could be serious trouble for Microsoft.

[Angleae]

25. I can think of a couple bigger blunders.

Microsoft BOB and Windows ME come to mind. Their future will be deeply affected by Windows 7 (or whatever it's going to be called). However, all reviews I've read keep saying basically the same thing, less bloated and faster than Vista, faster and less bloated than Vista. This doesn't instill much confidence, especially knowing that marketing and upper management probably aren't done having things added.

[OhioChick]

14. Outsource your jobs and now you have no one to buy your products. n/t

[Yavin4]

48. Yep.

It's really that simple.

[SammyWinstonJack]

74. Short-sighted greed pigs! Serves 'em right!

:think:

[wroberts189]

16. Perhaps they can lower their outrageous prices now ..nt

[Deja Q]

59. Nope. Prices will be raised to compensate, and large companies will pay for it...

then lay off more staff to ensure "quarterly profits" remain high. Book cooking, anyone have some salt?

[New Dawn]

26. Vista sucks.

[KillCapitalism]

27. Hopefully Windows 7 is a hit.

Words cannot even describe how bad Vista sucks, if 7 isn't better by leaps and bounds, they are in trouble IMO.

They also need to bring the costs of their OS down. Home versions should run maybe $99 & Ultimate/Pro versions should run $119 or so. That is reasonable for a decent OS. Lowering prices should also reduce piracy, however Vista is so crappy that a lot of people I know have a pirated copy.

[Deja Q]

53. I won't be bothering - the released system spec requirements are nearly identical...

At least, during the official beta stage. The RC and gold versions are still, for all intents and purposes, faster betas...

Ultimate should be $120.

Won't ever be. They need to keep their profits up by every cheat in the book.

"Unused RAM is wasted RAM" - another cheat on their part.

BTW: Windows+Office is sold in China for $3 each. It's still heavily pirated in the same country it's sold at for that price (per 2007 stats).

I'll keep XP.

[Xithras]

56. I'm generally impressed with Windows 7

It has a much smaller memory footprint than Vista, is a heck of a lot quicker, and was essentially crash free for me. I really didn't have a big problem with Vista, but Win 7 is a HUGE step up.

The problem, of course, is in the enterprise. Large corporate customers are Microsoft's bread and butter, and they haven't adopted Vista because of its steeper hardware requirements and its crash-generating "fluff". Windows 7 is Microsoft's attempt to fix many of Vistas longstanding problems to make it appeal to a wider audience (with deeper pockets). I suspect that it will work.

[Deja Q]

58. A perceived step up.

Everybody, at one time, was whining about XP being bloatware. Make Vista extra-bloaty and then whittle away some token fluff for what supersedes it, and everybody will think MS is the greatest company since Durex...

[Xithras]

60. Win 7, at least in Beta, is less bloaty.

Of course, nobody really makes a bloat-free OS anymore. The question isn't whether there should be bloat, but whether that bloat is genuinely useful to the user.

Every OS since DOS 6.22 has been laden with bloat, and even back then I knew guys who whined about the DOS disk space requirements and pined for the DOS 3 days when the whole OS fit on a single 360k floppy.

[alcibiades_mystery]

40. Ubuntu 9.04 released yesterday...it's good

Folks'll still have to do a little fiddling, but it's the closest to an out-of-the-box commercial non-geek operating system released yet. I remember with 4.04 the massive effort involved in getting the printer to connect. Upgraded, and the printer hooked up immediately. The damn DVD issue will still be a pain for some non-tech users, but it's getting simpler all the time.

Jaunty is the best yet, in my view. Definitely worth a partition and a download, now that hard drive space is so cheap.

[Toucano]

63. I have been using Ubuntu full-time and exclusively for over a year.

I do not miss Microsoft at all!

Jaunty is going to be a tipping point in favor of Ubuntu, I think.

[SKKY]

66. Or, you can download VirtualBox for free and try any distro you want...

...without having to partition anything! But, yes, 9.04 is pretty nice.

[personman]

71. Love Kubuntu, KDE 4 is slick!

For those who aren't familiar with it, Kubuntu is a version of Ubuntu based on the state-of-the-art KDE 4 desktop.

I began using the Alpha when I did a http://anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=138.html">preview for my site(w/ pics).

I've used linux for probably about 10 years or so. I worked as a technician professionally for a few years. I like to dabble in web-design and programming free software. You can see details on my work at my http://anarchismtoday.org/Personal/u=personman/">Personal Page.

I'm also a libertarian-socialist anarchist, and I've written a bit about free software, free society, and the parallels between the two. Cooperation, participation, and mutual-aid are alive and well in the internet age. A lot of ideas that have been criticized as utopian, impossible, are working just fine. People working together, without bosses, without hierarchy, and beginning to challenge one of the largest corporate monopolies, when few others could. I read an interesting article a few weeks ago, that even if Linux itself doesn't become the great threat, other things that have been made possible by free software and linux might. One example was google:

It's questionable whether google would have got off the ground had they needed to purchase the multitude of licenses that their server farms would have required.

As I see it, this is probably not a battle Microsoft can win. It's a movement, and barring something unforeseen, Microsoft's best days are likely behind them. They are huge of course, so they aren't going to vanish or anything, but they no longer have a stranglehold. There ARE other options.

I wrote a blog touching on the topic called http://anarchismtoday.org/Blogs/mode=display/id=18.html">"The Rise of Linux and the Death of Microsoft" shortly before they announced their first-ever lay-offs.

-Andy Rink

[Romulox]

41. Bailout time! nt

[Vidar]

44. Microsoft should have fallen long ago for deliberately foisting flawed

products on the consumer & virtually forcing their purchase through predatory monopolistic capatalism

[Deja Q]

55. I once saw an ad showing how MS used Win95 to promote the comparative stability of Win2000

No other company could get away with doing that. "Our new product, unlike our old one here, won't crash."

BTW: XP crashed at the launch event in October 2001... when they started Windows Movie Maker... :rofl:

Vista is stable, especially the 64-bit version, but it's bloaty as hell, despite half its promised features removed during its development period yet price wasn't reduced to match...

[alfredo]

47. The biggest problem is making things more complicated than it needs to

be. Make one rock stable OS. Don't try to be every thing to everybody. ((Keep it simple stupid!)) One price for the OS. A confused customer may give up and not upgrade. (14 years in retail taught me that.)

Hire experts in industrial design to help design the UI. Your color schemes look cartoonish.

They are customers, not criminals.

Fire everyone in marketing and replace them with low land gorillas. That would be an improvement.

[Deja Q]

51. WAAAAAAAAAAH

:nopity:

[workinclasszero]

65. Send more American jobs overseas Bill

and replace the rest with BS rethug visa indentured slaves, you filthy rich scumbag.

And to think I use to admire this traitor back in the day, what a fool I was.:eyes:

Oh well at least I can learn from my mistakes.:spank:

Never trust a capitalist pig, my friends.:fistbump:

I hope M$ is totally destroyed in the marketplace. :toast:

[Greyhound]

72. Seconded, except that it is no longer Bill, it's been Steve for the last couple of years.

The marketing moran is running the software company into the ground, has surrounded himself with marketing yes-men, and know less than nothing about the technical side of the business (not that M$ has ever been good at the actual programming side, but at least Bill had a clue).

[Sultana]

68. Hehe

that's all