Power User

Just curious, did ANY of those who decided the ONLY thing worth commenting
on was my little citation of French companies as yet another example of labor
difficulties causing bottom line problems check the companies they  mentioned to see if they actually ARE doing well? OR, are mostly FRENCH? Or, did you just pick a French-sounding
name?

I won?t bother responding with the actual FACTS about any more French
companies named after this, but here are two more.

One more bad French company ? Michelin, a family controlled business which
doesn?t provide much information.

Stock has gone from about 40 to about 50, but it took 4 years ? you can do that
well with a bank CD and inflation would have kept the actual value about flat.

BusinessWeek quote:

?When 2,000 angry workers rallied outside the
headquarters of Michelin in the French town of Clermont-Ferrand on Sept. 21, they plastered over street signs along Edouard Michelin Avenue, renaming it Full Employment Avenue. The workers have no quarrel with the tiremaker's
founder, for whom the street was named. But they're hopping mad at his grandson
and namesake, a quiet, balding 36-year-old who became CEO in June. He has
ignited a firestorm by announcing the elimination of 7,500 jobs, 10% of the
company's European workforce.?

Sounds like GREAT labor relations to me as well as a growing business - most growing businesses cut 10% of their workforce!!

And, BTW, almost half of the company?s
workers are at Sumitomo or Goodyear so it is about half French.

 
Groupe Danone stock IS doing well; of course it is only based in France, the
company does most of its business in the U.S. and Asia AND to keep the stock
price up it has had a big share buy back plan in place.

Danone may be a good stock investment, but NONE of the examples cited demonstrate a ?highly successful ?French? company
depending mostly on French workers and having good FRENCH labor relations which,
if you read the blog post, was the whole point of the little example.

France is a
socialist country with a reputation for surly workers and incredible labor laws (the current government is trying
to change them, hence all the riots) along with a very poor record of successful, innovative
businesses.

Until recently GM operated on a very similar labor plan.

MSFT has also treated employees incredibly well ?
UNTIL recently ? it's the change that is the clue - there?s that canary in the mine again.

While I share a lot of your opinions about Microsoft technical
abilities (I bought the original Mac, hate booting by PC every day and
use Firefox to read and answer this Blog), I think you are missing the
point:

MICROSOFT IS A MARKETING COMPANY!!!!

Microsoft never made the best product on the market (sorry, I stand
corrected, I can't possibly live without PowerPoint :-)), but they beat
everybody else at positioning and marketing their products.  
Does Dell make the best PCs?  Does Cisco make the best
routers?  No, but these companies have mastered the art of
creating products that fit the needs and priorities of most businesses
and people in the world.  At the end that's really what counts,
people "really" vote with their money.

As for the future, Microsoft is currently a leader in IPTV, capturing a
good portion of the footprint. They were on your desktop, now they will
be on your TV-top; and there is an awful lot more of those!!!! (too bad
our TVs will now regularly reboot!!!!)

One comment on your last comment:

"One more bad French company – Michelin, a family controlled business which doesn’t provide much information.

Stock has gone from about 40 to about 50, but it took 4 years – you can do that well with a bank CD and inflation would have kept the actual value about flat."

So, you're saying that stock price is the best or only indicator of performance of a company? Market share - nah, too bad. Gross income - nah, why. EBITDA - what for? Business plans - do they matter after all? STOCK-PRIZEN ROOLES U L0053RS!!!

Sorry, I don't buy it. And neither does a couple of professional economists I know personally. Stock price is ONE indicator of the value of a company, but never THE indicator. It should always be taken with suspiciousness, alongside a lot of other parameters.

Otherwise, when (in order to use an example) SCO Unix's stock price more than doubled in the days after their stupid assault against IBM over Linux... did that mean they were 2x or 3x a better company than the days inmediately before? That they somehow had discovered the magical tip on how to outperform not just the rest of IT industry, but most other companies in stock?

And when afterwards their stock prices fall down to levels even lower than before the lawsuit... was their EBITDA significantly lower then? Had they lost a very important deal with government? What about the Japanese real estate bubble? Or Nasdaq's bubble? Or...

What this shows, appart that you can prove almost everything with a properly-chosen example, is that stock price, buy itself, MEANS NOTHING ABOUT A COMPANY. And you should learn that before trying to argue about economics - now I'm taking with suspicious all you said before, and I guess a lot other readers will, too.

It's interesting that the author of this article has drawn an analogy between the automotive industry and Microsoft, but I don't think Microsoft will collapse the way Detroit has.

For one thing, the business community alone uses so many of Microsoft's products - namely Windows and Office in various releases - and that's unlikely to end anytime soon.  OpenOffice (and its predecessor, StarOffice, developed by Sun) has been around for ages and yet in these cost-conscious times there's not been anything resembling a stampede to these free products.  The reason is from the poster that ticked off things that Microsoft has done right - they have created a set of products with a consistent interface that, most of the time, work well and can be integrated with one another.  The value of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), a built-in feature to everything in Office, can't be understated.

There is also, I believe, a measure of comfort companies take from the notion of a paid, commercial enterprise being there to support them, should support be required. Size provides comfort - it's like the difference between flying in a full-size commercial airplane vs. a tiny 6-seater in which you feel EVERYTHING. "Pay for peanuts, get monkeys" indeed.  And while it's true that any large-scale, commercial enterprise will make its share of mistakes, Microsoft wouldn't still be in business if it made too many of them.

Finally, it was stated by several analysts that Apple Computer would be closing its doors by 2000.  Amazingly, since that doomsday prediction, Apple hasn't just survived, it has thrived, boldly creating new markets - iPod, anyone?  I think Microsoft has too much talent to just implode - getting everyone on the same page may be a challenge, but the company has what it takes to produce something that the market wants.

And believe me, there are PLENTY of people pulling for Microsoft.

One comment on your last comment:

"One more bad French company – Michelin, a family controlled business which doesn’t provide much information.

Stock has gone from about 40 to about 50, but it took 4 years – you can do that well with a bank CD and inflation would have kept the actual value about flat."

So, you're saying that stock price is the best or only indicator of performance of a company? Market share - nah, too bad. Gross income - nah, why. EBITDA - what for? Business plans - do they matter after all? STOCK-PRIZEN ROOLES U L0053RS!!!

Sorry, I don't buy it. And neither does a couple of professional economists I know personally. Stock price is ONE indicator of the value of a company, but never THE indicator. It should always be taken with suspiciousness, alongside a lot of other parameters.

Otherwise, when (in order to use an example) SCO Unix's stock price more than doubled in the days after their stupid assault against IBM over Linux... did that mean they were 2x or 3x a better company than the days inmediately before? That they somehow had discovered the magical tip on how to outperform not just the rest of IT industry, but most other companies in stock?

And when afterwards their stock prices fall down to levels even lower than before the lawsuit... was their EBITDA significantly lower then? Had they lost a very important deal with government? What about the Japanese real estate bubble? Or Nasdaq's bubble? Or...

What this shows, appart that you can prove almost everything with a properly-chosen example, is that stock price, buy itself, MEANS NOTHING ABOUT A COMPANY. And you should learn that before trying to argue about economics - now I'm taking with suspicious all you said before, and I guess a lot other readers will, too.

This is one of the stupidest comments i have ever heard.  Too compare the automotive industry with the software industry is ridiculous.  Ten years from now Microsoft will be dominant.  One obvious reason, there are absolutely no competitors out there yet for Microsoft.  They own 99pct of the desktop os.  GM has competitors up the ying yang.  They never have been able to compete successfully with Toyota or Honda, GM has to try to mimic them to stay even.

Microsoft has flaws, no doubt about it but there is still no alternative, and don't sing about Linux for gods sakes.  It's a nice OS but it has failed to be marketed properly.

I have no love for Windows, but if this were an Open Source car:

• Where the driver sits would vary from model to model. Let's say in the right-rear seat.
• Some would use a steering wheel (possibly turning left to go right!),
  some would use aircraft-style pedals, and others would use a sailboat
  tiller.
• While in Windows the hood [bonnet] is welded shut, not only can it be opened
  in OS, but the complete blueprints are stuffed in the glovebox and
  there's a complete machine shop in the trunk [boot], in case you ever
  want to build a new car.
• The speedometer is under the hood and is calibrated in furlongs per fortnight,
  the gas [petrol] gauge is under the front passenger seat and reads "full" on the
  left side, and the turn signal flashers have been replaced by a mechanical hand
  that points left or right.
• There's a different (but similar looking) key for each door, and the
  trunk, and the ignition.
• The four fenders [wings] come from four different make and model cars and are
  different colors. They're faired together with generous applications of Bondo.
• The owner's manual consists of two Xeroxed sheets filled with indecipherable
  engineer talk.
• Well, you get the picture...

-- Phil Perry

Isn?t it amazing how much trouble you can
stir up by asking a simple question?

I asked ?Is Microsoft about
to collapse??

 Almost no one
noticed that I never answered the question.

 My only conclusion
was that I wouldn?t buy Microsoft stock (who would after looking at the stock
chart?)

 An even more interesting question now might be, why did so many
people get so upset with me for even ASKING the question?

 Could it be a lot of people were already
concerned about Microsoft and didn?t like to even see the question asked?

 Stay tuned to this blog, sometimes I?m even more
outrageous and a lot of comments from smarter people are needed to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Since I live in PA, a state where the incumbent governor is pushing education and using gambling to take some of the burden of paying for it off old folks who own homes, and he is running neck and neck with someone whose only qualification for high office is that he played pro football.

Mr. Swan is doing very well in this area.  Since nothing exciting was going on in computer security today, my next posting is a short statement of my political views.

It?s a slow
weekend in computer security but I am fortunate to be living in a state with a
great political dog and pony show this year.

Usually I have to wait for
presidential election years to get my entertainment in the political arena but I live in PA,
and the incumbent governor has been pushing improved education while trying to use
gambling to take some of the burden of paying for it off farmers and old folks who own
their own homes - he wants to use slot machine revenue to cut school property taxes.

If/When this scheme
gets up and running it should provide a big boost for education in the state ?
people love to gamble so we?ll have lots of money to fund textbooks which aren?t
a decade old and we might even be able to aford a few more teachers who know more about computers than their own 3rd graders.

Also, of course, successful
gambling requires basic math skills so we should see more kids doing a bit of
homework, possibly even encouraged by their parents.

Wonderful!
Gambling will revitalize education in PA!

But the governor
is running for reelection neck and neck with someone whose mainqualification for high office
seems to be that he played pro football.

Mr.
Swan is doing especially well in this area.

Of course many of
my neighbors, especially the school kids, troop out to worship a marmot every
February second, so is it any wonder they think being a football ?hero?
qualifies someone to run a large state?

When you hear
reporters bemoaning the sad state of politics (as they do every election year) remember
that we actually find it extremely entertaining.

As a former Washington reporter my motto has always been:

"All politicians lie; some
of them steal too!"

Sadly
I've only been proven wrong a few times.

Real life scenrio here..

friend wanted an internet caching solution for his internet cafe..and he was tight on budget so is every cafe is

Linux+Squid sounds good..and its free.. we tried 3 flavours of linux, 2 different hardware, various network cards and then even a branded dell server.. everytimes something wouldnt work right.. either it would be the network card of the RAID controller or something

finally i was fed up.. threw in a copy of windows 2003 ent with ISA server 2004 std.. off my MSDN collection..yeah i know its not a properly lisenced software but leave the lisensing issue aside.. atleats it works now.. the server has been up for 31 days now.. support is not a problem at all..a basic techie can can told how to check the logs and keep an eye..

another scenrio.. sometimes i used to do web development..

i can use php with mysql running on apache on some god knows what flavour of linux.. all of the vendors are making the software independently with minimal collabration.. talk about annoyances..i choose to take it all from on vendor so i know it is designed to work together..

If microsoft doom was to happen, it should have certainly happend when they were selling us the crappy windows 98 and NT.. the stability was a joke with two of them..and that was the time when unix and linux still had very very strond benefits over windows..but it did not happen.. people continued to use windows 95, 98 and NT no matter how crap they were.. heck even windows millenium sold well..the point is.. MS designed stuff with the view of dumb consumer in their mind who doesnt give a shit abt behind the scene technology..what he cares more is to get his / her work done..afterall how many PC users are really techie's or tech oriented..???

the beauty of microsoft is that a two years old can be taught how to start a pc, log on, install a program or play solitire.. thats not the same with linux..and then if you were to roll linux in the corporate scene.. there are millions of flavour out there.. and none of them are soo perfect.. they all have their nicks and bits..even if you succed rolling linux in the corporate scene, the issue of support and available applications renders is a useless paper weight.

open source is good as a test bed for geeks all over the world to show their wish list of features..im not totally trying to bash linux here.. being in the networking scene.. i have worked with linux programs which cost me nothing where as a similar solution wouldnt be available to me on windows or cost me too much $$$$...Bost OS's have matured for their targetted use now..its just a matter of what an end user really wants to accomplish..

Microsoft car.

1. your car may stop responding under heavy load or traffic and you will be required to turn it of and back on again.
2. it will have a high price tag
3. will need regular updating from the manufacturer
4. everything is will be at the right place and will fit in correctly
5. the mechanics will be the hardware and the interior will be the software, therefore you can just buy the parts and build yourself a custom engine for your car..however you cant fiddle with the interior.. not even a bit.. not even relocating that start button..
6. and then we would have pirated cars all over the street and third world.. i bet its easier to catch pirated cars than software
7. corporates will have volume lisenced cars
8. they will have stylish designs (GUI)
9. installing accessories will be a plug in and plug out job.
10. your car will interoperate with pocket pc, xbox, anything M$

Open source car.

1. Everything comes from a different vendor with no approach to collabration.. therefore everything will just sort of work..
2. All broke ass nerds hacker wanna be's will own one
3. it will be free.. at the cost of gas guzzling
4. u can choose the GUI (car design) to be KDE or GNone
5. the car will not die on you in middlest of heavy traffic or on a race track ;-)
6. you will look at your cool buddies at the signal driving MS car and having all cool features which you will probably never have
7. your documentation is all.. gibberish figure it out yourself stuff
8. even to install a minor accessory in your car, you have to go through the hell of compilation and shit
9. you will have a lot of flavours of cars available to choose from

ifarooq

Real life scenrio here..

Liar.

Linux+Squid sounds good..and its free.. we tried 3 flavours of linux, 2 different hardware, various network cards and then even a branded dell server.. everytimes something wouldnt work right.. either it would be the network card of the RAID controller or something

Please post the hardware issues in detail. 

Most RAID controllers are supported or there are 3rd party drivers for them.  I can't think of a single NIC that ISN'T supported by Linux in some way shape or form.  As a matter of fact, many of the Linux platforms are setup to be servers, so the only conclusion that I can come to is that either you haven't a clue or you are lying. 

finally i was fed up.. threw in a copy of windows 2003 ent with ISA server 2004 std.. off my MSDN collection..yeah i know its not a properly lisenced software but leave the lisensing issue aside.. atleats it works now.. the server has been up for 31 days now.. support is not a problem at all..a basic techie can can told how to check the logs and keep an eye..

Lemme get this straight.  You had to pirate a copy of Windows 2k3 to keep with in budget...What about the licensing for the clients?  What about the various apps?

Support *IS* an issue.  MS still hasn't patch two critical flaws in IE, but 3rd party vendors have.  http://www.securitypipeline.com/news/184400787;jsessionid=VSNXNDYDGJ2WAQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN

i can use php with mysql running on apache on some god knows what flavour of linux.. all of the vendors are making the software independently with minimal collabration.. talk about annoyances..i choose to take it all from on vendor so i know it is designed to work together..

What the hell are you talking about?  PHP, mysql, and apache plug in perfectly to each other.  Once they are "put together" it is done...you need do no more.  What doesn't work?  What product isn't supported in the 3 you mentioned?  Have you talked to the devs about the bugs?  What are the bugs?  What can't you do?

GM had a relatively competition-free market?

I haven't been around long, but I remember another big competitor to GM (besides Ford) was Chrysler (still is). That's why they were called "the big 3". A smaller player that I remember from years ago was AMC (American Motors) who made Jeeps for a while. They were eventually acquired by Chrysler. I'm no expert on the market share numbers. I vaguely recall from recent retrospectives done on GM that they once had a majority share of the car market, something like 65% (don't quote me on it), but have since fallen to the mid-30s. So accepting the 65% figure for the sake of argument, that would leave 35% to split between the others, with Ford and Chrysler making up most of that, way back when. In terms of competition, there isn't even a "big 3" among the operating system manufacturers for PCs. There's just "the big 1", MS. Apple and Linux together don't even come close to the market share numbers of Ford and Chrysler in comparison to GM. Probably a better place to look for a comparison is in the web services market, among Google, MS, and Yahoo.

I think the downfall of American car manufacturers was a top-down management style, and yes, the unions. My guess is creativity was stifled within GM, rather like in the culture of IBM in the 1970s and '80s. I've heard it said that back then, at IBM, it would've taken 6 months just to ship an empty box. As I'm sure is the case with GM, there was an enormous amount of bureaucracy to wade through just to get anything done. GM and Ford are dinosaurs in the way they are organized. I'm not saying their product at a basic level is ancient, but rather their corporate structure, which was forged at a time when top-down, command and control management was seen as the best way to run a company. The unions reshaped this some, forcing the companies to provide ever higher salaries and benefits, which it's now looking like they won't be able to provide.

One of the main reasons IBM lost in the PC business is that, except for the BIOS, they left much of their IP in the hands of other companies. Once Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS it was all over, but only because Compaq and others were able to make "clones" of IBM's PCs more cheaply than IBM did, and the fact that MS retained rights to DOS and was willing to license it to the clone makers. If others were not able to make 100% compatible PC clones, in terms of hardware and operating system software, the computer industry would be a very different place today. IBM would probably still be dominating this market as it once did. Back in the 1980s, before clones came along, there were PC "compatibles" that were kinda-sorta compatible, but they never took off. The lesson of the experience is in order for a competitor to have a chance, they either have to be a 100% compatible substitute for the incumbent, or they have to sweep in at an inflection point in the industry, and grab customers away from the incumbent with a compelling product, and hold on to them. Such instances were the transition from a command-line based environment (DOS) on the PC to a GUI-based environment (Windows, OS/2, GEOS, GEM, etc.) in the early 1990s, and again to a web-based environment (Netscape, IE) in the mid-1990s. MS won in all of these inflection points. Another one appears to be going on right now, so-called "Web 2.0", what could be called "consumer-based web services", with Google (though right now it's acting as Jonny one-note with ad-funded search), MS with MSN and "Live" services (rather directionless), and Yahoo (which is making its play in media).

In retrospect, MS basically used and outsmarted IBM. They used the opportunity IBM gave them to build up their own base of support among hardware manufacturers, ISVs, and in business. IBM believed that the real profit center was the hardware and that no one else would be able to keep up with them on that front. MS believed that the profit center was the software, and they were proved correct.

Today IBM believes that the profit center is not in the hardware or software, but in managing and providing consulting for IT operations. Hence the reason they sold off their PC unit to a Chinese company. It's been doing well with that. It's managed to raise its stock price from around $60, after the dot-com bust, to around $80 a share. It looks like its stock has been hovering between $80 and $100 for the last few years. Google has been doing very well, around $400 a share last I checked, though its stock has also topped out. Its market cap is less than half that of MSFT. So a more plausible argument is not that MS is in trouble because of commoditized software, but because of services. It's in the wrong market, though it's just beginning to address that.

"Let?s say 10 people could develop a reasonably secure OS"

I think you're rehashing the same argument that the Linux advocates have made for years, that Linux will take over because it's free/low-cost, and it's secure. Well apparently that doesn't cut it in terms of what desktop users want. It has not taken off as a desktop OS. More realistic folks than yourself who are not exactly fans of MS have said that open source is only compelling when it forges new territory, not when it follows a well-worn path.

I think Linux has managed to be compelling, because it was seen as the next generation of Unix. Likewise, Firefox has gained market share not only because it wasn't a target of attack, but also because it offered nice features that no other browser had. It wasn't a mere copy of IE.

"Office XP has a lot more features than OpenOffice, but how many of them do you actually USE?"

How many people use most of the features of OpenOffice, for that matter? This project is following a well-worn path. Look. For people who just want to write simple papers with a little formatting, different fonts, and some highlights like boldface, italic, etc., they can use Wordpad which has come with every Windows OS since Windows 3.0 (if not earlier). If people want something simple, they don't have to go anywhere to find it. And gee wilikers, it uses a standard format, RTF. For simple calculations, there's a calculator that comes with Windows. About the only thing OpenOffice does that you can't do with Windows out of the box is nice looking slide presentations. OpenOffice is basically copying MS Office, and is not as efficient a workhorse either.

People have used MS Office for the darnedest things. I didn't even think it was possible, until a few years ago, that there are many businesses who use Excel spreadsheets as databases. It does this effectively, up to a point. I personally wouldn't use it for that purpose. I wouldn't try using Calc in OpenOffice for that unless you like making a trip to the water cooler every time you open it.

"MSFT (Mr. Softie to the street) stock hit a split-adjusted peak of about $60 a share early in 2000, since mid-2002 it has never gone above $30 and, in the last year has hovered between about $24 and $28 ? not exactly a screaming bull market."

After the dot-com bust, MSFT was at around $45 a share. It split in '03 (I think), and has been in the mid- to upper-20s ever since. The reason it's gone to the lower value was due to the recent stock split. If we're comparing stock prices, I'd be more worried about Sun. Back in 2000 it was (I think) up in the mid-20s. It hit a low a couple years ago of $2.50 a share (dangerously close to a penny stock), and more recently has gotten up to $4.50, but it's hovered at $5.00 or below for the past 4 years.

"Competitors selling equivalent products for far less ? actually many competitors are simply giving away equivalent (even superior) products such as Firefox and FreeBSD."

This would seem to be infallible logic, rather like the logic that IT in the U.S. is dead because all IT jobs are going to move to India because they have billions of people (to our millions), and they work for $6 an hour. It really oversimplifies things. I've seen many OSS advocates use it, but from what I've read, the uptake has not materialized as expected for all OSS products. For the most part, larger companies have used OSS as a bargaining chip to get MS to lower its prices in contract negotiations, and MS has typically responded by lowering its prices to those customers until they buy in. I've heard more than one story (one of them first hand) about established companies that won't even consider FOSS precisely because it's free. I'm not sure what the problem is, but Sun may have provided a clue. Sun originally tried to give away StarOffice to corporations, and they weren't getting as much excitement as they expected. The reason? Customers said, "You're giving this away for free. You don't appear to have a financial incentive to support or improve the product. Therefore, we're not going to use it." So Sun decided to start selling it for $50 a copy. Interestingly they got more business customers to bite when they did that. The moral of the story is giving a product away for free does not necessarily mean that customers will clamor to get it.

Startups on the other hand are embracing OSS, mainly because of the impression it has made that it lowers the barrier to entry. You don't have to pay a lot to get the technology you need up and running. I suspect it's most often used for specific functions, such as e-mail, setting up an e-commerce site, community forums for customer feedback or intracompany collaboration, etc.

"Founders who build a company on one or two ideas become less involved in the low-level product development."

In case you missed it, Bill Gates resigned his business leadership position at MS to become Chief Software Architect in 2000, I believe, around the time the judgement came down during the antitrust proceedings that MS was a monopoly. I don't know what you mean by "low-level", but I think it's fair to say he's involved in creating the overall direction of many of their software products. From what I understand Larry Ellison got involved in a similar role at Oracle at around the same time.

I'm an applications developer, and I've used OSS in the past, and I'll use it again in the future, where I think it's practical. I refuse to use it, as it seems some do, to be politically correct, to rebel against MS. I'm more interested in getting the project finished in the quickest time possible, and so are my customers. I'm not going to make my job harder just to avoid MS. To me that's a fool's game. I know what it's like to work harder than I have to, using tools that are flexible, in some cases OSS, but which provide no assistance in configuring them to do what I want. I call it "do-it-yourself development". I like putting in some work to get a project done, but if a tool can help make the process easier, I'll use it. I don't care who it's from. To me the morality arguments that say I'm supporting a criminal monopoly that stifles innovation by using MS software are moot. If I take longer to get a project done just so I can be morally satisfied with myself, that I stuck it to The Man, is the typical customer going to be satisfied with that explanation? Are you kidding me?? Get real! If, on the other hand, they have requirements that stipulate that the software I write work on multiple platforms with minimal adjustment, then there is a definite business case for Flash, Java, or use of OSS for development of the project. I'm interested in getting the job done, not in shoving my agenda down someone else's throat.

Below I respond to past comments.

Tech Locksmith: "Eventually companies will run on hard times again and start looking around for a place to save money. I think a lot of them will ask themselves 'What has Microsoft done for us lately?' It may be too late to start learning Linux development and Linux security at that time."

You're straying into territory you know little about. I didn't really start familiarizing myself with PCs until the mid-90s. But the IBM PC came out in 1981 and took off. Was it too late for me? No. Having barely touched a PC up until then, I started developing for DOS in C right away. Later I moved to Unix (in C--was trained on that in college), and then moved back to the PC, developing for Windows in C++/MFC. Gee, Windows had been around since 1985. Was it too late for me? No.

I saw some comments about how MS has crushed all of its competitors. Not true. Here are some that have survived for years: Intuit, Apple, RealNetworks, Corel, IBM, and more recently Sun. There are some who have grown significantly even while competing with MS, like Red Hat.

jared: "Their only defense against many alternative solutions is to disseminate pure FUD about the competition (more of the same for Microsoft marketing) and hope they can scare people away from them."

I see plenty of anti-MS FUD out on the internet, though it's of a different variety: it's based on many people's experience, but not totally on facts. The biggest anti-MS marketing I see is that Windows is insecure and buggy, and that Linux or OS X are better for all things a computer is used for because they're designed better and are more secure. Part of this is based on real world perception. People have had bad experiences with Windows in the past. The difference now is Windows has more security features than it used to.

I got my training in computer science, and I don't accept the notion that either alternative OS is bug-free or 100% secure, or that all your software will magically be more secure running on either of them. Code is fallable because people write it. The fact is they haven't been truly tested in the wild the way pure Unix (not counting OS X here) or Windows has. Part of my reasoning is based on actual reports. For example, Apache, whether it's on Linux or on Windows, is easily hacked these days. True, worm attacks haven't succeeded against it, but vandals have gotten in too many times to count. It doesn't matter which OS you use. OS X does have security holes. I see the reports from time to time. The difference is the vulnerabilities are hardly ever exploited because it's not worth it to the perpetrators. What notoriety are they going to get by taking down OS X?? The point is every platform has its pluses and minuses. I reject the notion that any one is "superior" or "inferior". Each has its strengths.

whitedo: "all the Microsoft trained developers and MCSE geeks who by nature of their paid for indoctrination program become certified Microsoft product evangelists."

Technology politics is nothing new. I remember years ago I worked on a client-server Unix project. We developed it on SCO. The customer site used nothing but Solaris. We tried to convince them to let us deploy our solution for them on SCO. The sysadmins at the customer site threatened to revolt if they allowed the SCO box in. They insisted our software had to be deployed on Solaris. And so it was.

Joe McTroll: [The change to the worker contract saying that those younger than 26 can be fired w/o explanation/appeal to gov't] "This law is unlawful discriminating young people (are 24's or 25's inherently less responsible than 26's? why? which study or respected psychologist investigator determined it?) and also puts employers at mercy of employers."

You're missing the point, Joe. The reason why youth unemployment in France is so high is because companies are afraid to hire them. Why? Because it's extremely difficult to fire them. First they have to get government permission to fire anybody, and that can take a long time. I read a story several months ago about a trash collecting company who hired a young worker. The worker either showed up chronically late, or just didn't show up at all. Meanwhile the employer had to pay him. Finally the employer got fed up, made an appointment to meet with a government minister to get permission to fire him. It took a while before they could meet. Then the employer had to wait another 6 weeks while the government minister decided whether he could fire him. All the while he had to continue to pay the employee who refused to work. Then he finally got permission to fire him. After these sorts of experiences, it would cause an employer to avoid hiring ANYONE. It's just not worth it.

The reason this modification to the worker contract is positive is it will encourage companies to take a chance on young workers. If they don't work out, they can let them go easily. If they do work out, obviously they would want to keep them. Once they're past 26, then they would have to go through the difficult process to fire them. Personally, if I were them I would make it two years probationary for anybody who's hired, not just young workers. The reason being that the current proposed policy is going to lead to age discrimination. Employers are going to ask "How old are you?" If you're older than 26, tough luck. But hey, there's a 24-year-old over there. "I'll hire that person," they'll say.

jmgarvin: "First I'd like to mention Free Software does not suggest it is free, as in free beer. It means the software is free as in free intellectually."

Yes, yes. I know you guys like to talk about this, but that isn't the reason most companies adopt it. They like it because it's free, as in beer. I worked on a project last year where I used a FLOSS web control. I looked at the license, and all I was really interested in was whether it would be legal for me to use it in my project. Turns out it was, but I had to wade through paragraphs of this ideological diatribe about how "open source was about sharing" and all its other virtues. I could've cared less. I just wanted to use it. I wasn't interested in being converted.

jmgarvin: "It seems like many IT folks are so averse to choice that they'd rather stick with a kludgy OS than move to an OS with choice to it."

I moved to Windows from Unix because it has better support for RAD, both for GUI apps. and the web. Speed of development is what I'm interested in. I like to design things well, but I don't like a lot of busywork if I can avoid it.

Eclipse is the most promising OSS dev. tool I've heard about, though it appears to have limited web development capabilities.

I?ve been playing around
with Microsoft?s Live.com and I don?t see how it can be anything but a colossal
failure.

Not that it won?t do what
Microsoft claims and not that it will be really dangerously insecure.
Discounting both of those and assuming it works perfectly, I don?t understand
what the point is.

I understand why Microsoft had to do it, but, I mean, who would use such a
thing?

Businesses probably have
something better already, or at least wouldn?t trust their security and
scheduling to Microsoft, especially Microsoft online.

Savvy home users have
already learned to put up with the quirks of Yahoo!

 Of course I never understood
who would use the similar collaborative services available on Yahoo!, although I did test
them out pretty thoroughly. They work, but so what?

 
For example, I thought the
Yahoo! Groups it would be a great way to centrally manage emergency management
for my county ? posting events, training sessions, any important news, and
generally providing a simple, easy-to-use portal to help coordinate all the
widely separated municipalities and send targeted emails just to the coordinators.

I set it up and it worked fine. No one ever used it.

I already had more
sophisticated tools available and everyone else either couldn?t see the point
or couldn?t learn how to log on.

Of course I could be wrong. Perhaps there is a vast untapped group of people just waiting for Microsoft to
bring them a Web portal, online collaborative tools, and online security (Microsoft secutiry!) but somehow I just missed the clamoring crowds.

For a less opinionated view
of Live.com and some of the other Microsoft beta tools including OneCare, Essentials, Live
Office, and such, check out my Locksmith column. And, while you're at it, check out  ideas.live.com too, perhaps you 'll find something you like, or at least something to give you a good laugh.

Well I dont know about the demise of Microsft, personally I don't see that anytime soon. But as this seems to have decended into a pro MS and pro open source debate I feel I should comment. Most of the comments have come from developers and the like. As an administrator MS has definate advantages, one of which is quite simply users are comfortable with the user interface. An advantage for both an efficient help desk and finding staff for the help desk. But why are people either pro MS or pro open source, both have definate advantages in different commercial situations. The advantages of Microsoft operating systems have been well discussed here. One which I can't agree with is the reliability of MS OS's. The Linux servers on my network never crash. None of the Windows servers can match the uptime of these servers. This makes them perfect for print servers etc, the only requests from users is for ink and paper not complaints that they can't access printers. Quite simply both MS and open source have advantages that organisations should be utilising on their networks. Niether will die any time soon, however I can see Microsoft loosing some market share as open source continues to move forwards in terms of it's usability and ease of administration. With those things moving forward all the time, at least partial implementation of open source OS's makes sense and saves money. Obviously this will have some impact on Microsoft's bottom line, open source is still the only credible threat to MS's domination. Will this cause the demise of Microsoft? I doubt it.

I have been an active user, developer and supporter of
Microsoft and UNIX products from as far back as 1982. As a platform agnostic
Security professional, I am also an active adopter and supporter of the renewed
Open Source Competitive efforts. It is always necessary to bring out the ?best
features? of user platform whenever possible. I strongly believe that Microsoft
will continue to thrive and prosper for the following reasons: 

1)     
Open Source competitors are in disarray and not
able to muster any ?action plan? in winning ?people? over, product success has
very little to do with technological superiority, Windows is a living proof.
What ever happened to United-Linux? It appears it has been divided and about to
be conquered.

2)     
MS has mastered the art of Corporate survival by ?any
means necessary? (radical) ? witness Massachusetts OpenDoc slugfest, Uncle Sam?s
Litigation and subsequent adoption of MS Office Suite by many of Uncle Sam?s
Agencies, on going sparring with EU and on and on.

3)     
Ability to see opportunities where everyone perceives
only threats ? It has the ability to morph into what it lacks. 3 years ago it
looked like the end was imminent with the deluge of worm against Windows
Platform and outright syndicated effort to extort money with mal-ware from East
bloc Countries code mavens. It is safe to say that Microsoft has turned the
corner with revamped kernel and product acquisitions to make up for areas of
Company weaknesses. These acquisitions are making their way into new products
and are coming out as tools to improve reliability on Microsoft platforms.
Furthermore, it never loses sight of the competition, taking the ?carrot and
stick? approach to the Linux challenge.

4)     
It is socially engaging through the Philanthropic
efforts of ?Uncle Bill & Melissa? World-Wide. This ensures there will
always be room to negotiate and accommodate. If ?Uncle Bill?s? Knighthood doesn?t
awe you, Chief Ballmer?s Sumo size will put you in check.

5)     
Most importantly it is a battle-tested and battle-hardened
Company leaving many mighty foes in its wake; as to bloated operating costs ?
since when has it become illegal to dump employees by the ?boat load? in ?difficult?
times for Corporate America. There is always a first time for everything. With
a global economy that has allowed it to tap into relatively ?modest-wage?
hi-tech specialized professionals, there is no downside to this equation.

I have been an active user, developer and supporter of
Microsoft and UNIX products from as far back as 1982. As a platform agnostic
Security professional, I am also an active adopter and supporter of the renewed
Open Source Competitive efforts. It is always necessary to bring out the ?best
features? of user platform whenever possible. I strongly believe that Microsoft
will continue to thrive and prosper for the following reasons:

     1)     
Open Source competitors are in disarray and not
able to muster any ?action plan? in winning ?people? over,
           
    product success has
very little to do with technological superiority, Windows is a living
proof.
What ever            
            happened to
United-Linux? It appears it has been divided and about to
be conquered.

2)     
MS has mastered the art of Corporate survival by ?any
means necessary? (radical) ? witness Massachusetts OpenDoc slugfest, Uncle Sam?s
Litigation and subsequent adoption of MS Office Suite by many of Uncle Sam?s
Agencies, on going sparring with EU and on and on.

3)     
Ability to see opportunities where everyone perceives
only threats ? It has the ability to morph into what it lacks. 3 years ago it
looked like the end was imminent with the deluge of worm against Windows
Platform and outright syndicated effort to extort money with mal-ware from East
bloc Countries code mavens. It is safe to say that Microsoft has turned the
corner with revamped kernel and product acquisitions to make up for areas of
Company weaknesses. These acquisitions are making their way into new products
and are coming out as tools to improve reliability on Microsoft platforms.
Furthermore, it never loses sight of the competition, taking the ?carrot and
stick? approach to the Linux challenge.

4)     
It is socially engaging through the Philanthropic
efforts of ?Uncle Bill & Melissa? World-Wide. This ensures there will
always be room to negotiate and accommodate. If ?Uncle Bill?s? Knighthood doesn?t
awe you, Chief Ballmer?s Sumo size will put you in check.

5)     
Most importantly it is a battle-tested and battle-hardened
Company leaving many mighty foes in its wake; as to bloated operating costs ?
since when has it become illegal to dump employees by the ?boat load? in ?difficult?
times for Corporate America. There is always a first time for everything. With
a global economy that has allowed it to tap into relatively ?modest-wage?
hi-tech specialized professionals, there is no downside to this equation.

"Things don't last forever".

Certainly Microsoft won't survive thru eternity, somehow one day it
will cease to exist, perhaps dismantled a piece at a time as many other
corporations did before, or maybe will be engulfed by a larger being.
Possibly a sudden catastrophe will destroy the corporation as a whole
along with many others, among those maybe your own business.

These guys are absolute leaders of their business. Lord masters on
devising gadgets consumers enjoy the best. Always watching on new
arrivals at the IT scenario, eager to take ownership on other's ideas
and products if they mean valuable profit. Their products are launched
thru hollywoodesque campaigns at highly profitable -yet affordable-,
prices. For them innovation is a mean to achieve profit, and not
otherwise. Very few corp's have been so successful as them, undoubtely
their main goal is making business.

Willing to defeat rivals of any sort and size at almost any arena,
Microsoft is very concerned about its public image, always trying to
keep a neat and clean face, casual but professional, even when they
loss at the courtrooms they look fresh. Most of other large corp's are
far from achieving this, plenty of CEOs fired here and there because of
mismanagment or lack of competence.

Today some people address 'compatibility' as a major disease at
Microsoft, just recall that most of ordinary consumers plead for
preserving it. If you are not an ordinary consumer don't forget you
possibly make your living out of them.

About Unix-like operating systems worshiping, recall that UX is an
aging soul, conceived in late 1960's as a response to the need of a
formal OS on non-mainframic computers. UX has evolved a great deal
since then, but in its depths still is somewhat influenced by its
heritage, as a matter of fact, it is coded in a frankensteinian version
of its former C language, this is C++ (even Wins use it!). If UXs have
been enhanced, Wins also have, but with different focus.

Really new OSs have been there since always, thru decades some of us
witnessed the rise and fall of many, some surpassed the conceptual
designs of today's ordinary OSs, but most of these had the curse of
being proprietary. At research places and universities new
architectures shall arise and wait for their right time to come. Some
of those will be adopted, maybe by Microsoft or by the ones left at his
business 'niche'.

Microsoft's end won't be some sort of Comics story with UX-superheroes,
Win-villians, Mac-wizards and User-victims, possibly it will come as a
natural event, as a byproduct of business evolution.

If Microsoft falls all of a sudden, as if it were some sort of Roman
empire defeated by Heuns, we better get ready for Middle Ages and start
praying for an early Renaissance.

A note about GM, its fall was caused by much more than just failed
managment, unmanageable factors made large contributions to it. Just
think on this, thru the years consumers changed many habits, among
other they became more receptive to foreign goods, not just because
these were fine and perhaps cheaper, but also because it became a
fashion. Somehow consumers have contributed to GM's defeat, and to some
extent to their own.

But don't worry, world won't come to an end.

A DVD standards war, that
is.

Shades of VHS and Betamax
people always say, but only those who didn?t also get ripped off by the RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc vs laserdisk wars. Those of us who did see the developing fight over the next generation of DVDs as just another battle where consumers can only loose.

I was at the forefront of
the optical disk revolution, having written two early books on optical storage
long before DVDs were even being talked about ? my first CD-ROM player (an Amdek
LASERDRIVE-1) sits in my personal museum of computing right under an old Kelsey
Letterpress (I once used lead type, just like Gutenberg.)

Since the big boys (this
time Sony and Toshiba) never seem to be able to put consumers above their own
interests, it looks as if we are going to see two completely incompatible optical
disk standards for high-definition video.

Sony has the Blu-ray technology
backed by Pioneer and Philips, along with Dell and most of the big movie
studios.

Toshiba has almost no one
signed up for it?s HD-DVD format, other than those small time players Microsoft
and Intel, along with some studios which "say" they will support both versions.

There has been talk of this for several years but it is all about to hit the fan(s) right in their credit cards.

Big-T should be out in a few weeks with a $500 player (and little to play on it.) Microsoft is expected to provide an add-on HD-DVD player for the Xbox.

Sony will probably premier Blue-ray
DVD players as part of the next PlayStation, this fall.

HD-DVD (15GB capacity) will
be easy to produce in current factories at little additional cost.

Blue-ray (25GB to 50GB) is
technologically far more elegant, but will require all new production equipment
and it probably isn?t even possible to produce the 50GB Blue-ray disks with
today?s available equipment.

What do you think? Will Joe
and Jane consumer really be dumb enough to spend thousands of dollars for an
HDTV set, $500-$1,000 for a high-def DVD player, and probably $50-$75 initially
for movies when there is no way to even hazard a guess as to which, if either
of the competing HD-DVD or Blue-ray technologies will be around in five years?

And, if YOU personally are
lined up to buy one or the other, do you have any interest in buying an old but
working RCA VideoDisc player and about 50 old movies?

One thing everyone seems to
forget is that baby boomers are a growing segment of the population and have
the money to buy such toys, but our eyesight is also failing just enough that many
of us don?t see much advantage to HDTV anyway. That raises the interesting
question of whether most of those with the money to buy these things really care
about high definition TV anyway?

Personally (I just knew you were dying to learn my opinion GRIN) I am sitting this standards battle out on the sidelines. I happen to publish DVDs and my hardware cost less than $500 so I'm not interested in making any big investment to get my animal videos out to the public, but even if I were just a consumer I'm getting too conservative (smart? cheap?) in my old age to spend a lot of money to help some mega business try and establish a new standard so THEY can dominate an industry.

Another thing to remember is that the reason I bought that old RCA VideoDisc player was because I lived out in the boonies and couldn't get movies on TV at that time. A lot of my neighbors bought that or the laserdisk players for the same reason. Bear that in mind that movie studios are already planning to sell high-quality movies over the Internet and you can see why both Toshiba and Sony are getting a bit nervous about more than just their two-sided competition.

I picked the RCA VideoDisk because my uncle was a big-time engineer with RCA but it turned out that the laserdisk didn't last much longer either.

(As an historical note for your youngsters, the RCA VideoDisc actually played like an old LP with a physical needle moving through a groove - possibly the biggest kluge of the second half of the 20th century! - p.s. if you don't know what a kluge is, ask your grandfather.)

Is Steve Jobs a strategic thinker? Or, is Apple doomed because of a focus on tactical planning?

I want to make it clear, I don?t know Steve
Jobs. However, a friend of mine, Stan Veit (Computer Shopper) knew him and Woz
well enough to offer them their first chance to show the Apple I at an east
coast trade show (Atlantic City, August, 1976) by sharing his company?s (The
Computer Mart, 314 Madison Ave., NYC) table with them.

(There is a picture of a scruffy looking
Steve Jobs at the show, standing behind an Apple I and next to Dede Veit in the book, ?Stan
Veit?s History of The Personal Computer.?)

So, I?m not guessing about everything.

Also, I used to work for Wang Labs, the
significance of which should soon become manifest.

Apple started out with a nice computer but to
compete with the IBM PC the company turned to the Macintosh, a very closed,
proprietary system which was arguably superior to the PC, but, mostly because
of pricing and the proprietary nature of the computing environment, it failed
to gain more than a toe hold in the personal computer market. At the time of the famous Super Bowl commercial I was impressed by the concept, but wondered just who was going to buy these computers in large volumes if it wasn't the very big brother companies being satirized. 

Yes, I know it was IBM which was the specific target,
but subtext is critical in commercials and many companies proudly compared
themselves with IBM?s successes so the commercial indirectly targeted them also.

But perhaps the only target audience ever intended for the Mac were the graphics artists and big brother haters who ultimately became such loyal fans.

Certainly that first generation of Macintosh computers
really caught the imagination, although my Tandy Color Computer (Motorola 6809
cpu) was actually superior in many ways (it ran OS-9, cost a LOT
less, was color, had a considerable library of games and applications, etc. I
even had an optical drive on mine so, after driving 90 miles to the nearest Apple dealer, I turned around and drove right back home.)

Apple and the Macintosh did very well
until the market became saturated. About that time Windows had developed into a world-class
user-friendly competitor in the PC market and Apple fell on very hard
times.

In hindsight it appears that there was
actually a fairly limited market for the proprietary Macintosh (with the size of the potential world market you can sell a lot of comptuers and still be a bit player). Once the initial market was filled, demand dropped
off considerably. A serious blow for the
future of the Mac was the fact that U.S. government agencies (the world?s largest computer
market) as well as big business didn?t like the idea of single-sourcing one
little bit.

(Here is where my association with
once-strong Wang Labs becomes noteworthy. I have some experience with
proprietary systems, having closely watched the collapse of a company which
insisted on remaining a single-source proprietary vendor to the point where the
last two installations I used was the free one donated by An Wang to The
National Press Club of Washington (a brilliant PR move). At about the last big
government user was finally switching over to PCs and it was the most
conservative of agencies, The U.S. State Department ? hardly on the forefront
of technological advances ? although the SD Credit Union is good (GRIN).) Since Wang was ahead of the PC, the situation wasn't identical, but few in the company doubted that staying proprietary in the face of IBM's PC is what killed Wang Labs.

Recently Apple has been rescued - mainly on the
back of the iPod - but also because of a move away from a Macintosh which only used a
proprietary OS to one running a flavor of Unix and even one based on Intel chips.

The iPod too is also arguably over priced and
is certainly based on a proprietary technology. Also, it may well be reaching a
point of market saturation, at least in the U.S.

Is the same boom and bust cycle about to hit
Apple Computer and for the exact same reason it happened before?

I can?t be certain, but it sure looks similar
to me.

Overseas markets may turn out not to be as
open as Apple certainly hopes. In fact, France, probably to be followed quickly by the entire EU,
has already declared Apple?s ITunes a consumer rip-off because the files won?t
play on competing systems. This affects Microsoft also, but hardly threatens the company bottom line.

The possible saturation of open markets for the iPod, along with the way Apple is rapidly
moving the Mac into the PC world, led me to ask the opening question, ?Is Apple
CAPABLE of long-term thinking??

The Steve Jobs of the early days could be
forgiven for short term thinking ? after all, he was a kid who invented a
company (a GREAT company) in a garage, but, while he was still able to ride to
the rescue of Apple a few years ago, it certainly looks as if someone there still hasn?t
learned the basic business lesson taught by Wang, the Macintosh, amnd the exhausting
battle over a video tape standard. Standards battles have few winners and, in
the long term, open systems usually survive longer.

Apple is now 30 and Steve J. is entering his
50?s. While he has proven once again that he can take a company from almost
nothing to the top and certainly understands what will appeal to consumers,
what has he done about finding a replacement? Someone who will be able to
continue doing what he was able to do twice?

Since they would have to be motivated, creative,
and probably wouldn?t fit in a corporate mold anyway unless they molded the
company around themselves, is it even possible to find such a person?

When he left Apple the first time the company
almost folded. When he came back, it surged. Am I the only person who sees a
pattern here? Although Steve Jobs isn?t Apple, in a very real sense Apple IS Steve
Jobs and if he gets bored again, or runs out of ideas, or for any reason again departs the leadership position in the company , what will Apple look like a few years down the road? Apple (except for the iPod),
is rapidly becoming just another generic computer company.

If this seems like a case of Deja Vue after
my big blog posting on Microsoft, it really isn?t. The two companies are very,
very different and the reasons I question their ongoing viability are also
quite different.

Microsoft?s continuing position as a major
player probably doesn?t depend on Bill Gates, but I believe Apple?s very
survival does depend very directly on what Steve Jobs does.

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I'll say this only once. Vista is the last benchmark software for Microsoft.

As recent as the last few days the Asian market (India) has started to embrace open source like it was mothers milk.

 The Indians and Asians have a history of cutting the crap from an idea and re-presenting it in a lighter, more efficient and less cumbersome form. All this with a hugely reduced cost at retail and a much lower capitol outlay at production.

Couple the Indian IT boom with the Chinese market ( which Microsoft have recently stitched up a flimsy deal) and you have two thirds of the world PC market that have no sense of loyalty to " same old same old".

Woe betide he or she that discounts the volume of business this growth is going to create or the momentum that is building. 

The EEC is dragging it's feet at the prospect of blindly following Microsoft?s lead and could be said to be being blatantly digging their heels in opposition and unafraid to be defiant at the megalomania that has become Microsoft?s arrogance.

 The next real battle is not so much operating systems per se, but the operating system format in which the world will use the new Internet.

Europe has again put the in boot in respect of the American insistence and presumption that it alone should control Internet governance. American dominance is showing cracks.

An alliance of European and Asian interests will quickly form a formidable alternative to American corporate and governmental dominance of the IT industry.

The existing regime wallows in the argument of the old American car manufacturers prior to the impact of the Japanese car industry. Silicon valley and Texas chip development now have well established asian competition.

 Microsoft is destined to become another GM, Ford or Chrysler.

The American market may be loyal to Microsoft and its car market ,but the rest of the world drives Japanese and likewise the rest of the world will compute on a cheaper and a more widely available platform that will cater for high end use but still allow open source to integrate at will. -A feature that Microsoft neutralized in its urge to be the dominant computer operating system. A feature that is probably the biggest gripe of existing computer users the world over.

Start selling those Microsoft shares, look to European satellite investments, look to production facilities in China, look to investment possibilities in Indian R&D.

While the financial administrators and IT propeller heads in corporate America debate mergers, acquisitions and technical bullshit about the next network rollout, the bigger world is looking toward a new dawn.

WildBlue Follow UP 

After excellent initial service from the new WildBlue 2-way
satellite Internet service as described in my Right Tool entry, I have
experienced increasing problems, some hardware related, others which tend to
indicate that management expanded too quickly.

First the billing problems, then see how long it takes to
get a down system working again.

My first credit card bill for WildBlue service turned out to
have a major error, a second bill for the single service I had ordered.

I quickly challenged this with both the credit card company
and WildBlue?s billing department but it took three months and my own personal
investigation to get it all resolved ? for details, read on...

Each month my bills from AMEX showed two WildBlue service
charges placed at the same time, one for my correct amount and the second for
the next higher level of service. 

But my WildBlue bill only showed a single invoice amount ?
for the correct bill ? nothing relating to a second bill. 

After several months of having AMEX withhold that second
payment and no help of any sort from WildBlue except for them to tell me they
had no idea what was going wrong (despite my providing them with the
transaction details from my AMEX bill) I finally had some time and started
probing myself.

I found that someone in another state was getting free
WildBlue service because I was being billed for their connection as well as
mine.

Now I didn?t loose any money on this, and I still don?t know
how the error occurred, all I know is that it couldn?t have been my fault
because I never heard of that other person, never even drove through their town.

So, why didn?t WildBlue take more interest in this problem
and track down why my credit card was being double billed until I had tracked
down the problem myself?

>This is a troubling question.

 
But there are worse things than a disputed bill, such as not
having access to the Internet for an extended period.

See the next blog entry for that sad tale.

I'd post it now but the story isn't complete so I don't know the ending yet - I am
now 10 days into no WildBlue service and counting with no uplink in sight. 

I certainly don?t want to be the kind of person to say ?I
told you so.?

 
Oh, wait, yes, I DO want to say that because it's TRUE.

 
Just days after I asked whether Microsoft was in big trouble
the stock market discovered the same basic problems and cut the value of the
company by 30 Billion dollars in a single day.

 
Say what you will about the stock market (and this certainly
isn?t a stock advisory blog), when the big money boys cut the value even of a
company the size of Microsoft by $30B, they must see something they don?t like.

 
The specific trigger was Microsoft?s announcement that the
company was going to spend a lot of money in a game of catch up trying to pull
users away from Yahoo! and Google.

 
But the more general cause was the fact that Microsoft has
had a very poor track record when it tried to expand into new businesses beyond
the company?s OS and fat client model which was so successful.

 
Apparently I wasn?t the only one who thought so.

 
Sure, Microsoft has a vast amount of cash to spend, but the
question is whether they CAN build a search engine the equal of Google or a
community as happy as Yahoo!?s loyal fans?

 
And, not only that, but can they develop search and
community/portal services which are so much BETTER than those already offered
by Google and Yahoo! that people will take the time and trouble to switch?

 
Personally I doubt it.

 
But Microsoft has no choice other than to try and battle
Google ? Google is betting on the thin client which could kill Microsoft?s cash
cow permanently.

This might help some readers better understand entries in this blog

Definition of ANALOGY

An analogy is a comparison between two different things, in order to highlight some form of similarity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

and
 SIMILE

In ragard to the comments about the French companies
HYPERBOLE
a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
www.iclasses.org/assets/literature/literary_glossary.cfm

Exaggeration used for emphasis. Hyperbole can be used
to heighten effect, to catalyze recognition, or to create a humorous
perception. Example:
home.cfl.rr.com/eghsap/apterms.html

These are all literary devices which you will occasionally encounter in literate writing.

As a homework exercise some readers may wish to look up the following words:

humor
and
exaggeration

You might also wish to look at stock prices for companies such as Microsoft.

Thank you for your comments.

nope

Well, some idiot has done
it again (carelessly handled other people's private information) and this time someone needs to serve some serious prison time if only
to set an example and put an end to this absurd situation where schools,
hospitals, and government all demand our personal information before rendering services and then hand out our information to anyone who bothers to pick it up.

The Associated Press is reporting that a Veterans
Affairs employee took files (probably unencrypted files or the FBI wouldn't be so excited about it) home with him/her, where they were
promptly stolen.

So what has happened to the idiot? Is he/she in jail? Ya
gotta be kidding, he/she works for the federal government so they are on leave ?
the statement didn?t say, but I bet it is on full paid leave.

What will it take to stop this rampant careless handling of our private information?

I favor drawing and quartering, perhaps during a prime-time TV special, but that may be a bit too
draconian for these kinder, gentler days, after all, it only costs those
who have had their identity stolen 6 months to 5 years, to forever to
straighten out the problem. Even if nothing bad happens, people will worry and have to spend time watching their accounts closely because they know they have been made vulnerable. 

Why should federal employee actually get punished for causing such problems for millions of people?

I think that if the VA employee doesn?t serve serious prison
time (and you know they won't), he/she should just be named, complete with his/her birth date, mother?s
maiden name, and SS# of course.

Yea, come to think of it, that's the perfect punishment for such people, whether they are in government, academia, or private companies - if your dumb carelessness exposes people to identity theft then YOUR personal information should be posted on a Web site.

What do you think? I'll volunteer to run the Web site.

Those of you
who are following the Bird Flu threat and are considering my suggestion that
you get your company prepared for telecommuting on a massive basis should take note that time may be short.

If the
pandemic hits (and it may not, but planning would also prepare you for a major terrorist attack or natural disaster) and if you want your company to survive begin planning NOW!

13 deaths have been reported this
month.

An entire family in Indonesia ? one which doesn?t keep poultry, has been infected
with H5N1 ? all but one are already dead.

This incident illustrates two
vital concerns I have been expressing.

>The World Health
Organization?s plan to block a pandemic by rapidly responding to an outbreak
and treating everyone in the area with Tamiflu is bound to fail ? the Indonesian
government has blocked efforts to learn more about the dying family and now,
three weeks later, six are dead and there is still nothing but denials out of
the government.

>
The likelihood of
a pandemic is increasing. Having seven members of a single family who don?t
raise chickens become infected at the same time is a powerful indication that a strain of H5N1 has developed
which can move directly from human to human ? possibly jumping the final barrier to becoming a
devastating pandemic.

If you are concerned, now is
the time to plan for how your company will operate when half the employees are
out sick and many businesses as well as government services simply stop. That
is what will happen if we encounter another pandemic similar to the one which
hit the world during WWI.

Make plans for telecommuting.

Consider banning anyone other
than essential IT staff from the building(s) so they can operate relatively
safe from infection and keep essential services running for telecommuters.

Consider stocking some
inexpensive N95 filter masks for employees ? it will make them feel better
about going to work and also provide considerable protection.

No mask will block the virus,
but N95 or N100 grade filters will block the aerosol from coughs and sneezes
which carry the virus.

Also prepare information for
employees ? this is no more easy to catch than the flu we deal with every year,
it is just much more dangerous if you do catch it.

Hand washing and similar
precautions can prevent many infections.

Unfortunately the current
strain is most deadly to youngsters and those with strong immune systems
because fatalities are mostly caused by healthy immune systems triggering
Cytokine production and consequent lung failure.

For updates, you can check my free www.helpdotcom.com site.

Full information is finally seeping out and it turns out that
the records were mostly of veterans and families of veterans discharged after
1975.

Although I suspected we weren?t being told the whole story simply
because I was a Washington-based reporter, I didn?t want to say it without
evidence but apparently the VA delayed telling the local police about this and,
when they did, they made it seem like a tiny incident by saying only a few
hundred personal records were stolen.

The original theft occured on May 3. 

It took weeks before the VA finally notified the FBI and
owned up to the vast size of the theft.

Some commentators have suggested that these records might be
worth upwards of $200 to $500 million to crooks.

But I don?t want to be nasty, perhaps everyone concerned in the
attempted cover up should spend one day in prison for every person whose
private information they exposed to identity thieves.

Certainly if the data falls into the hands of crooks it will
cost every one of those veteran?s and their families more than a day to fight
the system and attempt to fix the problem.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson has refused to name the original employee, so let's add him to the "should be in prison" list.

Since the VA has been criticized for years for poor security, the only innocents in this are the veterans and their families.

The Washington Post had this quote:

""VA has not been able to effectively address its significant
information security vulnerabilities and reverse the impact of its
historically decentralized management approach," acting Inspector
General Jon A. Wooditch wrote in a November 2005 report."

V.A. Sec. Jim Nicholson is testifying before the Senate?s
joint oversight hearing. Hear it online (CSPAN-3) NOW at:

 http://www.c-span.org/watch/index.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS3&ShowVidDays=30&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

  The audio and video feed will also probably be available in C-SPAN archives later.

_______________________

Equifax has offered special services to everyone who may have
been affected

http://www.equifax.com/siteAssets/productPromos/veteran/veteran_breach.htm

To place an initial fraud alert on Equifax credit reports,
phone 877-576-5734

____________

First.gov, the Federal information portal hosts a page
titled:

?Latest Information on Veterans Affairs Data Security?

http://firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml

Unfortunately I checked it this morning (May 25 1100 hours East Coast Time) and
the ?Latest? information was posted on May 22 so take that with a grain of salt.

There are reports that that the number of identities for
sale on the Web has more than doubled in the short period since the VA data was
stolen.

One privacy monitoring firm has told reporters that, just in the past few weeks, his organization has seen an increase in
the sale of personal information linked to military addresses and more than a 100% increase
in the personal data for sale in underground criminal chat rooms.

Unbelievably, by this morning some of the major news outlets
have already dropped this story from their main news pages.

Searching on the opening pages of both www.cbsnews.comand www.abcnews.go.com showed no mention of
the biggest identity theft in history.

This story has already been pushed to the back
pages! Perhaps when they get some exciting video it will make it back to the main page!

Those who suspect that there is more to this data theft than has been reported may have more than paranoia to go on. Last night I saw news
reports that the unnamed person responsible is not just unnamed, he/she may be in
hiding on the West coast ? at least the FBI apparently haven?t been able to
catch up with them to interview them about the incident.

Steve Ballmer is busy trying to
convince investors that Microsoft is really NOT collapsing of its own weight,
despite all the evidence to the contrary.

But, while the software mega-giant
struggles with competitors Google and Yahoo!, trying to get people to use Mr.
Softie?s Web portal and search engine, it only takes a minute talking with a
long-time Hotmail email service user to see just how badly Microsoft treats
customers and how poorly they understand what people are looking for in a Web
experience.

I have e-mail accounts
everyplace from go.com to Yahoo.com and dozens of places which don?t even exist
any longer ? I have them because it is one of the best ways I have found to get
a feel for how companies treat customers, especially the ones they can easily
get on the Internet just by providing a service as good as competitors.

If they actually offer a
superior service, the way gmail.google.com is now doing by grouping conversations
together for easy reading, then they will be wildly popular.

But, athough I have a hotmail
account, I have resigned myself to using it as my spam bucket, not because I
wanted to, but because Microsoft (MSN) has done such a terrible job managing
spam. Since MSN obviously hasn?t a clue as to how to block any but the most
blatant spam, and is unwilling to give users an easy, meaningful way to
block repeat spammers themselves, why not use it to catch all the spam I get
from surfing the web? Certainly no amount of work on my part could make it a GOOD email service.

Just consider today as an
example. I had 30 emails, 28 of which were spam, and 20 of those I had
previously marked as junk mail using the tab on the MSN Hotmail toolbar.

Some of you might suggest that I
don?t know how to manage my email properly, but I have had a Yahoo account just
as long and it was published in conjunction with one of my columns, both online
and in print more than 1,000 times, yet I have a lot less junk mail at Yahoo
because they simply do a better job of filtering it out.

There is a Junk e-mail filter on
hotmail but I have it set to the ?Enhanced? level and did so years ago.

Sure, there is a blocked sender
list, but I filled it years ago. I haven?t checked for a long time so it is
possible that there is now more capacity, but it is a real pain to use anyway
so I don?t bother.

Does Microsoft want more
visitors who would use services such as Hotmail and therefore keep coming back?
It doesn?t seem so.

Why, for example, doesn?t MSN
Hotmail have a button which can automatically block either a specific sender or
an entire domain with a single user click?

Why doesn?t Microsoft itself do a better job of
blocking obvious spam?

Is it because they just don't think it is important?

Or, is it because they can't do it?

Many users have the suspicion that they just don't care.

If I can tell at a glance that a message with the From
field ?Vonage? or ?Housekeeping? or ?Las Vegas? or a subject line beginning ?Save
50%? is spam, why can?t Microsoft block this junk? And, if it simply can?t,
then how can the company expect anyone to place any faith in their security
products or ever attract a loyal following to it's web portals or search engines?

Get a clue Microsoft. If you want to attract people to use an online service so you can sell ad space, then you need to either treat them well, or at least convincingly pretend that you care about their web experience.

Or, you could stick to what you made your money on AND secure windows and IE instead. Fix what ya got and stop trying to beat companies such as Google and Yahoo! which are simply much better at what they do!