Comment of the Day #2, November 29, 2005

Quoting:Microsoft's grand vision of the 90s, if it hasn't already failed, is crashing and burning.

Remember: They didn't want to sell a lot of servers. They wanted to own the space.

They don't, and they're not going to.

I don't take them for granted. It's quite possible they will own the whole space. Never underestimated zillionaires with serious personality defects.

Tom -

There are plenty of billionaires and millionaires out there whose livelihoods, profits, bonuses, etc are not well served by the zillionaire getting even richer.

If Linux and FOSS didn't exist, somebody would create it, just to get leverage.

I thought you were not around during the day. Stop pontificating and go back to work.

Which billionaires and millionaires are you referring to specifically? Your honor, counsel is leading the wittness. Is there a question anywhere in our future? How do you know somebody would create it? Answer the question. Yes or No? Do you know specifically of someone who would create it? Answer the question. Your honor counsel is leading the wittness. Overruled, the wittness will answer the question. Your honor, permission to treat the wittness as hostile. Permission granted. Specifically Mr. Pannell, which billionaires and millionaires are you referring to and tell us how you know someone would create it.

Your honor. Please instruct the wittness to answer.

I request a break.

Please, court is adjourned forever.

No empirical evidence, I request a dismissal.

Granted.

But we haven't addressed the issue of personality defects.

me me, I want to call a witless.

ROFL. Looking for reasonable doubt.

Counselors -

I must seek a "back to the mines" recess.

In the meantime, I'll bet you can come up with a few names of your own...starting with the people who own and or run every large business that incurs major IT expenses.

Your honor, the witless is leading counsel.

dino - some of those self same types screwed their own companies only later to join MS, hence, your argument does not represent an open and shut case. Particularly when we have too many reputable witlesses to counter your erroneous, however, respected assertions. [In proper British speak: we have more twits we can call than you.]

Furthermore, I have no plans to do the plantiff's discovery work. He's the one who made the assertion and he has to provide a preponderance of evidence. Not me. Case dismissed.

" I have no plans to do the plantiff's discovery work", hmm i think IBM said that when SCO came along, look where it got them :)

Good and bad point.

Does this site have a Surgeon General's warning about eating or drinking while reading the site could be hazardous to one's health? Not even a disclaimer? Sheesh! Look, I almost choked on the apple pie I was choking down. And it had to be someone's fault because it sure wasn't my fault. At least, I'm not taking the blame for nearly choking on my pie while reading this. I didn't know it was humorous until it was too late. Yeah, that' s the ticket. I was ambushed!

Not the surgeon general but the attorney general.

And now that court is back in session...

Counselor Tom -- or is that Tom, who should seek counseling -- asked for evidence of my statement that the assorted billionaires and millionaires whose pockets the zillionaire seeks to pick would invent an alternative if Linux and FOSS did not exist...

Hence, a bit of a history lesson.

Let's start with a little history from my old days working for the EDS of Ross Perot. We were a huge IBM customer. But we always managed to have an Amdahl somewhere in our data centers. In fact, EDS partnered up with Hitachi to form National Advanced Systems. The rationale: without leverage you don't get a good deal. Amdahl and NAS, whatever their merits as processors, made great leverage.

Remember when IBM was the big bully, not Microsoft?

Perhaps, then, you remember the EISA bus, a rather laughable alternative thrown together to compete against the IBM microchannel architecture. It was inferrior to the microchannel in every way but two: The price was right, and manufacturers didn't have to pay any royalties to IBM.

For that matter, as hard as it may be for some of the readers here to swallow, Windows 3.0 could be seen as filling a similar role vis a vis the vastly superior OS/2.

Or, gosh!!! Phoenix BIOS anyone?

How about Dells replacing Compaqs replacing PS/2s?

Business people can be really stupid, but they don't like having their pockets picked.

The tricky part is getting over the "safe buy" compulsion of middle managers.

Dino: You make no sense at all. Are you sleep deprived or what?

Tom, Tom, Tom...

I make lots of sense. You must be the one sleep deprived. The point is simple:

Microsoft isn't the only player with money in the game. The history of IT -- really any industry -- is that people seek out alternatives. Nobody likes to be at the mercy of a single supplier.

For the longest time, Microsoft was actually a hedge against IBM and against the Unix vendors -- high priced spreads, all of them.

It's taken a while for companies to see Microsoft the same way they saw the other guys, but it's happening. For all it's money, Microsoft doesn't come close to having the resources of all its customers and potential competitors combined.

That makes sense.

I'm still not convinced that they can be stopped.

A difference between IBM and Microsoft exists. IBM doesn't look for new customers. Don't argue with me about that because I really know that. They primarily service their existing customers and look for new products and services to offer them.

Microsoft on the other hand wants IBM's customers. They want Oracle's customers and Sun's customers. They don't look for new solutions to introduce to their existing customer base, they look for ways to impregnate people with their operating system and to get people to port their applications to Microsoft's OS.

That's a narrow strategy that Microsoft uses and they are successful with it.

As you said, they don't want to just sell a lot of software, they want to own everything.

That means they want to annihilate Linux.

Tom --

IBM is a funny case, but I think your characterization is a just a bit unfair.

They certainly mine their customer base -- no denying that.

Their mainframe business has a long history of selling new products to old customers. No denying that.

But then you see something like Linux on mainframes, which creates a whole new category and -- mercy me!! -- new customers.

I still remember going to Linuxworld in 2000 ( I think it was 2000, might have been 1999) and talking to the IBM guys. This was right after mainframe Linux came out, and the IBM sales guy was smiling like a bird with canary indigestion. He wouldn't tell me a precise number, but the neighborhood we hemmed and hawed our way into surprised me mightily. More to the point -- he told me they had registered their first conquest sales in years.

...they look for ways to impregnate people with their operating system and to get people to port their applications to Microsoft's OS.

Oh Great. I was impregnated with an evil OS, and then I had an abortion! No wonder I'm such a mess. O.k., maybe I'm the one sleep deprived. Time to conduct some rack ops.

dc --

If the evil OS was Windows, it pretty clearly lacked a soul. The abortion is OK under those circumstances.

If you take Linux and Unix together (justified because they are similar in the sense that switching between them is easy, while switching with Windows is much harder) then you get:

Linux+Unix +8.2%

Still more than Windows... so you cannot explain this away as Linux eating away at Unix.

...and remember, we're still talking revenue, not units. L+U revenue growing more, in spite of an internal shift from an expensive to an inexpensive platform...

I guess it is a matter of perspective, but I would hardly call it a pipe dream. You are right that they were smoking something if they thought Microsoft would absorb the server room.

Smokin'!