Let's be Brutally Honest...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| NicholasDonovan Nov 21, 2006 5:30 PM EDT |
You have to step back and ask yourself; "Why now?" and "What does Microsoft stand to gain from this?" If Linux is not a threat then why go into a deal with Novell? Just ignore it right? Microsoft has backed itself into a proverbial product corner. They can't create a true, multi-user OS without it looking an awful lot like Unix. This presents a legal problem for them as it relates to Unix excluding the FreeBSD/OpenBSD etc. derivatives. It's pretty obvious that FreeBSD is clear and free given the fact that it has already survived court challenges and has established legal precedent. To use their model (the *BSD model) would mean a defacto acknowledgment that OpenSource et al. was superior and that they can't do either. Let's be honest, any shadow Microsoft can spread during its intro for Vista will serve them well due to the less than stellar reception the prospect of yet another upgrade means. The OpenSource community has done an excellent job at modularization of OS in general ensuring that the desktop, management aspects etc. were in fact separate from the OS itself. KDE, OpenOffice etc. are relatively modular and you can again see Microsoft back in that same position they were in back in 1996, with the US Attorney's looking long and hard at their business practices. Microsoft appears to be striking out like a frustrated child. Their Xbox is a flop compared to PSIII and Vista is a large yawn for most and a definite "not again" for many. MS-NBC is a flop. What other revenue sources do they have available? A: Not many in my estimation. They are going to have to use Licensing restrictions and attempting to tie down the PC architecture in a pretty draconian way to get where they need to go. My Analysis: This is a futile effort on both Microsoft's and Novell's parts. The whole thing with SCO failed. I believe we all know how Microsoft was tied-in in via Silver Lake Partners to SCO. This has been pretty well documented by now. The new CEO of Novell is a newbie. He's not been a CEO very long and in my opinion has a very bad case of hero worship with Steve Ballmer. Why I don't know. Steve would be selling cars or something else were he not at Microsoft. He's nothing special and I've seen the destruction that hero worship can cause at companies first hand. All the doom & gloom sayers back in 2003 were sure that the executives that ran Linux companies and the users were just dumb naive "crunchies" (sorry Dan) that had no clue about the 'real world' and boy were they at SCO and Forbes going to show us how it all worked. This is the same thing. You will have the people whose collective arses were soundly spanked in the post-SCO fiasco piping up soon and looking equally as ridiculous. ZD-Net/Gartner et al will write 'analysis' on how Microsoft is a safe bet and the fair weather friends of OpenSource will be exposed for what they are. Actions speak louder than press releases. Cheers, Nick |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 21, 2006 6:05 PM EDT |
>To use their model (the *BSD model) would mean a defacto acknowledgment that OpenSource et al. was superior and that they can't do either. Worse for MS, at least in the short run, is that they acknowledge that Apple was correct with OS X and that it's a superior OS. >Their Xbox is a flop compared to PSIII and Vista is a large yawn for most and a definite "not again" for many. MS-NBC is a flop. That first bit is too soon to tell, although the Xbox is not yet a moneymaker; the PSiii could still wind up being a gigantic failure. Vista is not looking as good overall as MS would hope, that is for certain. MSNBC has not been a financial goldmine for anyone involved. I give them credit for having Keith Olbermann, however. That man's commentaries are insightful and funny all at the same time...well, sometimes they're just serious, but he's great. >What other revenue sources do they have available? A: Not many in my estimation. Office is a huge deal for them, still, but they are struggling to find their place in the new IT world. I think they'll find something. As much as I would like to bury the corpse of the company in the back yard, they've got a boatload of money and they'll figure out something. At least we can neuter them. >The OpenSource community has done an excellent job at modularization of OS in general ensuring that the desktop, management aspects etc. were in fact separate from the OS itself. It's nice to trim the OS down to what you need. I did an install today (here at home for my use) of SugarCRM on a minimal CentOS install, with only elinks added to download the Bitrock installer from the Sugar website. Works great and I didn't need the GUI at all, or all of the other crud that would load down Windows. It makes it easier for the hardware to support the software and not the operating system. That's a distinction a lot of Windows folks don't seem to understand. |
| swbrown Nov 22, 2006 5:08 AM EDT |
"Their Xbox is a flop compared to PSIII" How do you figure? There are many more XBox 360 consoles out there, a much wider selection of games, a well-received online service with global achievements, and are taking less of a hit per box sold. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 22, 2006 11:37 AM EDT |
Yup. XBOX360 is whopping PSIII's ass big time. I predict that both will loose out to the Wii though. I've been looking forward to Nintendo's comeback. PSIII's saving grace will be that it can run Linux. I predict it will make quite a few sales where people need access to cheap Cell-based hardware. I smell a PSIII Beowulf cluster coming up in 6 months :-) |
| tuxchick Nov 22, 2006 11:51 AM EDT |
pf, real geeks do USB floppy-drive clusters. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 22, 2006 12:12 PM EDT |
>I predict that both will loose out to the Wii though. I think Nintendo has a winner with the Wii, but it's not an Xbox or PSiii killer by any means. >PSIII's saving grace will be that it can run Linux. There's also the little fact that the Playstations have, in the opinion of many, the best implementation of games. I've always found the PSes to be better than anything else. Sony has too much invested to make it a failure. Unlike MS, they're actually able to innovate sometimes, and not just with trojans. I think that once people figure out that the PS3 makes a good general PC as well as a gaming platform, more people will take an interest and forgive the high price tag. It could also bring over some Windows people, the kind who say "Linux doesn't play games!" Fine, but now the games can play Linux! |
| swbrown Nov 22, 2006 4:48 PM EDT |
"I think that once people figure out that the PS3 makes a good general PC as well as a gaming platform, more people will take an interest and forgive the high price tag." The PS3 would make a pretty bad general purpose PC, as it'll be significantly slower than an equivalently priced general purpose PC for general purpose code. The benefits of the cell are only for specific types of code, and it requires custom designing code to run on it - it's not something where you can just recompile the outlandishly slow Theora reference encoder on it and it magically goes fast - you basically have to write distributed algorithms and have a task that is possible to parallelize. I see AMD's Fusion architecture as bringing this kind of capability to the x86 PC set, so I think cell's future as a general-purpose, non-embedded architecture is grim. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 22, 2006 5:24 PM EDT |
>The PS3 would make a pretty bad general purpose PC, as it'll be significantly slower than an equivalently priced general purpose PC for general purpose code. That general purpose PC won't play PSiii games, and "pretty bad" is a rather broad statement. "General purpose" also refers to the magical trio of email, internet and documents. It'll be great for that, and anything beyond...well, we'll see. For $600 you're not getting anything close to the PSiii, and a lot of people think it's great just for the games. Me? I want one (eventually, when the hysteria drops) for that and for running Fedora or Yellow Dog on. |
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