Re: Hoooray!!!! Death to micoshaft!!

On Thursday, June 2, 2011 5:23:31 PM UTC-4, 7 wrote:

TomB wrote:

> ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.advocacy.]
> On 2011-06-02, the following emerged from the brain of Snit:
>> 7 stated in post udSFp.4387...@newsfe06.ams2 on 6/2/11 1:16 PM:

>>> Hoooray!!!! Death to micoshaft!!

It will take more than that to "Kill" Microsoft. In fact, Steve Ballmer's moves with Kinect were brilliant, and he could easily use that to boost X/Box sales and/or license the technology to other gaming systems. Ironically, the Kinect patent only covers use of the device for transcribing sign language to text, but that would also be an awesome move.

Ballmer has been moving more aggressively into recreational computing to make of for the declining sales in business software. It's a good move on his part.

Many have considered computers running MS-DOS or Windows to be toys since they were first introduced. Serious IT professionals responsible for servers and systems that manage $millions or $billions worth of information, on a daily basis - find it amusing that businesses actually consider PCs much more than a toy. But that's probably because many business people were replacing alternatives such as a 4 function calculator, typewriter, and chalk-board. The others have never known anything BUT the PC, and most of them only know Windows.

>>> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...ad-ubuntu-
linux-eee
>>> -pcs


>>> "NETBOOK INNOVATOR Asustek has announced that it will ship three
>>> models of its Eee PC with Ubuntu 10.10 preinstalled."

>> Impossible. MS will not let them.

Microsoft has a big problem right now. Compaq was in bad shape when HP bought them, Gateway was on the verge of Bankruptcy when they were bought by Acer, and IBM dumped Lenovo because it was such a money pit.

Today, Dell and HP have to compete not only with Acer and ASUS, but also with Pandigital (electronic picture frames - now tablets), Motorola, HTC, Blackberry, Apple, Archos, Casio, and about a dozen other consumer products manufacturers offering 7 and 10 inch tablets with Android and bluetooth capabilities, not to mention Kindle and Nook, which are Linux powered and put tablets in the $100 range.

> The impact of MS racketeering on OEMs certainly is diminishing. Not
> that it's entirely gone, but it's heading in the right direction.

There was once a time when Microsoft's blessing was a guarantee of 20% annualized growth rates, 30-40% profit margins, and minimal support and replacement costs. For this reason, OEMs felt that it would not be possible to sell an entire line of PCs without Windows.

ASUS showed that they could sell millions of NetBooks running only Linux, and Acer followed with their version. According to one maker, on similarly equipped hardware, the Linux device captured 40% of the market.

Microsoft has not done very well in the smaller devices. Even on Netbooks, Windows 7 pretty much killed the market for Netbooks, and the iPad was the final nail in the coffin for Windows 7 based Netbooks. Many retailers are sitting on very stale inventory.

In tablets, the scene has been even worse. Microsoft has been used on Windows 7 tablets - but they typically cost nearly $2,000 and are pretty much standard PCs with SSDs - Windows 7 was just too power hungry.

Windows 6 mobile and Windows 7 mobile have failed to generate any substantial excitement - because Google is doing things that even iPhones can't do with all carriers. With my HTC Thunderbolt, I can talk on the phone, be a wifi hub, and run android apps all at the same time - thanks to that little Linux kernel in the guts of the phone.

Linux in it's Android and Kindle form, are generating awesome sales numbers, and the Sony e-book is not doing too badly either.

With Asus offering Android 3.x on it's 10 inch tablet, along with bluetooth, WiFi and USB a and b ports, it's pretty hard not to look at Android tablets as a real competitor to Windows on PCs. For those who already have a PC, the tablet means they don't have to rush into an upgrade right away. With many companies now stretching their refresh cycles out to 5 years, compared to every 2 years several years ago, the tablet is the best way to get the latest and greatest features and apps.

Even app developers are losing interest in Windows 7 as a sole development platform. Programming for Android and iPhones - using the user interfaces to talk to Linux service applications - has made it much easier to more programming get more support for more platforms, get a bigger piece of a rapidly growing market - using Linux/Unix API and Android/iOS GUI interfaces.

Writing for the Windows 7 API means you might be able to invest $10 million dollars to get your product onto retail shelves and maybe get $7 million in sales before your inventory goes stale, or Microsoft comes out with a competitor product, or Microsoft endorses one of your competitors. AND you can just pay 25% of your off-the-top revenue, since your profits are non-existent.

> Unfortunately they're still able to bully eg. smartphone manufacturers
> with dubious patent claims and manage to get up to $12.5 per sold
> unit. And ultimately the customer suffers, as that money has to come
> from /somewhere/.

Barnes and Noble probably delivered the fist killer blow
to micoshaft on the patent trolling front.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story 110427052238659

Microsoft has a real problem here. The so-called patented technology has been carefully protected by strict non-disclosure agreements, and it would be nearly impossible for Microsoft to prove that the developers who contributed their open source implementations of code that was different but performed the same function - wasn't intuitively derived - especially since the Linux Foundation has every contributor certify to the originality of their contribution. At best, Microsoft might be able to put some unethical hacker into jail - while Linus or the OSS community chooses one of the 15 other competitive alternatives - several of which are offered under GPL-3 as well (can't enforce patents on the GPL version).

Since Google and others honor the terms of their GPL licenses, it would be really hard for Microsoft to claim that they had no idea that the prior art existed - before they filed their patents - or just forgot to mention it in their patent application.

The scenario seems to be:

Have person 1 look for code that's similar to something Microsoft has written.

When such code is found - have person 2 file a patent claiming that Microsoft is the only one who has ever been able to think of and invent this idea. Make sure that person 2 does NOT know that the GPL code already exists.

When the patent is granted - because the prior art was not mentioned - file lawsuits against those who do not have the deep pockets to fight back - and hope that Google - who WILL fight back - doesn't take a very active role as a co-defendent.

Once big companies fail to sign up to micosahft NDA,

Microsoft has often tried to get people to sign their NDA for their "Open Source" code. They tell you they will let you look at the code, but before you can look at it you have to sign this huge long wordy license which has buried in it, an agreement that everything you get, whether you look at it or not, is protected by NDA, and as a result, anything you do that's even remotely similar, for GPL code - would be subject to Microsoft's intellectual property rights control.

It's like Microsoft couldn't find another SCO, so now Steve Balmer is willing to bet the entire net worth of Microsoft on a case in which not only could Microsoft patents be nullified, but their products could end up being forced into GPL (if GPL code was found to be stolen for the Microsoft version).

Microsoft HAS used lots of BSD code, but the same code was also released under GPL, and that GPL code has been enhanced and bug-fixed - but never released as BSD code. If Microsoft attempted to make these improvements on their code - that would mean the Microsoft code is now GPL.

the whole
house of cards falls down and companies like Ausus who
got cheated out of money in the past by micoshaft
become emboldened and do the right thing making Linux products
and selling Linux netbooks and PCs for profit.

Microsoft's strategy for NetBooks was pretty simple. They told ASUS and ACER that they could either license every machine they sold for Windows, which meant they HAD to pre-install it, and get that for about $15 per machine, or they could pay $300 for every one of their machines that was sold without Windows and was discovered to be running Windows - since it was obviously pirated, even though the Windows user would have had to buy a hard drive, making them eligible for a $60 OEM version. But Microsoft knew that ASUS and ACER couldn't prove that these machines were legally licensed, and it would cost far more than $300 per machine. It's quite likely that given the alternatives, the cost of putting Windows on the laptops seemed cheaper than duking it out with Microsoft. Unfortunately, to get Windows 7 running on the machine instead of Linux, they had to double the RAM, add a hard drive, and increase the display size and resolution. The result was a netbook that ran about 2 hours on batteries instead of 8 hours it ran with Linux on flash.

The more money Ausus makes with Linux, the more it can
spread it around on more open source projects.

There are lots of companies making lots of money from Linux, and they typically donate about 1/10th of 1% of their gross revenues back to Open Source projects, others like IBM invest $1 billion/year in OSS and get $30-60 billion back, depending on what you count.

>> Actually, sorta odd they picked an older version of Ubuntu and not
>> the current. LTS... I guess that is a safer bet.

If you're going to spend $millions or even $billions producing and distributing millions of little devices running Linux - it's probably a good idea to pick something you know is exceptionally stable - rather than something so "Bleeding Edge" that you will end up getting a bunch of them back as returns.

I'm suspecting that we may see Android or Chromium, rather than plain old Ubuntu. But Google has already previewed versions of Chrome on Netbooks, and those previews came with Ubuntu.

ASUS just released their Android 3.0 10 inch tablet a few weeks ago, and sales seem to be quite brisk. Which is unusual for this time of year.

I don't know if ASUS was late to the market, or just very early, but they will have a strong brand identity before Back-to-School season starts.