03.09.10
Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Vista, Windows at 4:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Windows Phone 7 dumps old applications, Zune has an error, and Xbox remains a struggle (all of these areas have lost money for Microsoft)
LAST WEEK we wrote about Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, calling Microsoft “somewhat disgusting”. We examined it more closely and showed that Microsoft continues to attack rivals rather than concentrate on improving its own products. More recently, Benioff was quoted ranting about Microsoft and saying that “they’re nowhere” in mobile, which is increasingly true. Here are some more bits from his talk:
Seattle Times Biz-Tech reporter Sharon Chan recently caught Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff’s session and found him “rolling with a Microsoft (News – Alert) rant.”
As usual, Benioff had opinions and wasn’t shy about expressing them. “In the world of mobile, which is only behind social” in importance, Benioff said, Microsoft “are nowhere.”
Today we look at Microsoft in the mobile space. Microsoft is trying to ‘pull a Vista’ and pretend that its next version of Windows Mobile will be a totally new product (it even has a new name/brand). Well, it’s not. It’s not even backward compatible. What a disaster, just like Vista.
The word is now official: “Existing Windows Mobile apps won’t run on Windows Phone 7″
The rumors about Microsoft totally cutting the compatibility cord with Windows Phone 7 were true.
Charlie Kindel, Microsoft Partner Group Program Manager for the Windows Phone Application Platform & Developer Experience, in a March 4 blog post, acknowledged that existing Windows Mobile apps won’t be able to run on Windows Phone 7 devices.
This is also covered by the LA Times and in LA Times Blogs we find some more details (not included in the main article).
Emphasizing its departure from its previous generation of mobile devices, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said its new Windows Phone 7 Series devices won’t run programs from older versions of Windows-based phones.
Also, for the inquisitive:
• Windows Phone 7 not backwards compatible
• Microsoft to launch incompatible telephone
• Microsoft News – Microsoft: No Old Apps for New Windows Phones
• Microsoft Says New Windows Phones Won’t Run Current Apps
This happens to mean no Skype, not even some Adobe programs. Developers walk away. One article asks, “Is Microsoft already stumbling with Windows Phone 7?”
Microsoft’s current mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5 – hardly a critical darling – will soldier on until the release of the new OS. And, as analyst Carl D. Howe said to Fortune’s tech blog, “Microsoft just took a gun and pointed it at the head of Windows 6.5 and said, ‘Don’t buy this’.”
Citing the Yankee Group, Fortune/CNN writes:
“Microsoft just took a gun and pointed it at the head of Windows 6.5 and said, ‘Don’t buy this’,” says Yankee Group analyst Carl D. Howe. “If I were HTC or one of their other handset customers, I’d be pretty mad.”
There will be no upgrades either, so regular fans of Windows Mobile are disappointed.
Well, what about the Windows Mobile sibling, Zune? Microsoft still messes up.
Zune HD Facebook app bombs on launch
[...]
Microsoft says it has successfully solved a communication issue between Facebook and the new Facebook app for Zune HD. The problem kept Zune users from viewing the Facebook News Feed.
Microsoft fixed it later (not that many people noticed, as very few actually use this gadget). Is this Microsoft’s expected level of product quality? And how about Xbox 360, which is probably the best example of atrocious hardware? Here is some Xbox 360 news from the past week:
• When good game consoles go bad
• Microsoft still says ‘no’ to Xbox Live in Eastern Europe
They say it every year. Microsoft has been promising Xbox Live since 2006 – and Polish gamers still don’t have it.
• 250GB Xbox 360 drive arriving March 23 in US? – Retail Radar
GameStop lists, pulls listing for $130 expanded storage unit for Microsoft’s console; Microsoft mum.
• Microsoft’s Toulouse: Why I suspended an Xbox Live user for reciting the Declaration of Independence
• Gay Xbox Gamers Can Now Claim Their Identities
That last one does not mention the homophobia at Microsoft. There’s a long history there. █
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03.02.10
Posted in Bill Gates, Hardware, Intellectual Monopoly, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 9:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: This is a set/variety of news with no single point of focus
THERE is more patent news (of relevance to Free software) than we can cover exhaustively, but here is a quick list of important articles.
Multimedia Patents
Here is an article warning about the “legal minefield” which is H.264.
If you’re a digital-video professional–the sort of person who records weddings, sells stock footage, or edits B-roll–chances are good you deal with the H.264 video encoding technology. But after reading software license agreements, you might well wonder if you have rights to do so.
A recent blog post by Harvard Ph.D. student Ben Schwartz, including the provocative phrase “Final Cut Pro Hobbyist,” put the spotlight on license terms in Apple’s video-editing software by questioning when professionals may use H.264 video. A similar “personal and non-commercial activity” license requirement appears in Adobe Systems’ competing Premiere package, too.
The patent pool behind H.264 must have its members lick their lips just thinking of how the world gets saturated with their software patents. It gives financial leverage that they have not fully exploited yet. This is why the debate about free codecs should not be dismissed as irrelevant.
Facebook
The other day we wrote about Facebook's latest software patent, which is a problem to many. It’s somewhat similar to Amazon’s one-click nonsense. Why did Facebook need such a patent? “Because Without Patents, No One Would Ever Come Up With News Feeds,” says TechDirt sarcastically.
The purpose of the patent system should be to create incentives to come up with something that is both new and non-obvious, which would not be created without that incentive. And, then, of course, the idea is to share that information with the world, via the patent.
“Facebook’s news-feed patent could mean lawsuits,” says this article which appeared in CNN.
Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming “feed” technology — more specifically, “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network,” complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.
Patent Markings
This item which was mentioned in Slashdot and covered by TechDirt is a fine example of lawyers interfering with the industry and nitpicking in order to make jobs for themselves.
A few years back, we wrote about some lawsuits that were filed against companies who were still listing expired patents on their products, implying that those products were still protected by the patents. The practice of claiming patent coverage over something that isn’t patented is known as “patent marking,” and it’s become very popular lately. AdamR alerted us to the news that Activision was recently sued for patent marking, in listing out patents on certain games that don’t cover what’s in those games. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Joe Mullin points us to the news that, in just the past few months, it looks like a bunch of lawyers have started going around filing patent marking lawsuits. In at least some of these cases, totally different groups of lawyers have sued the exact same companies over the same patents.
If anyone needed more proof that the patent system hampers society, this is it.
Patent Lobby
“Patent Deal Is Close,” argues the Senate Judiciary Chairman.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced Thursday that he has reached a tentative agreement on patent overhaul legislation with the panel’s ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. “We have reached a tentative agreement in principle that preserves the core of the compromise struck in committee last year,” Leahy said in a statement. Leahy said he hoped to release details of the agreement “in the coming days” after consulting with other senators and House lawmakers.
[...]
The Innovation Alliance, which has been critical of the bill, said the changes “appear to be a positive step in the right direction.”
With Innovation Alliance lobbyists involved, it’s unlikely to be too useful. Microsoft's patent troll, for example, spends millions per year on bogus ’studies’ and lobbying, so the system can be made worse. The word “reform” disguises this possibility because of its connotation. There is some more information in TechDirt.
“Patents and software need to get a divorce before they destroy innovation, particularly the FOSS development process.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawVirginia Espinel, the “IP” Czar which was mentioned here for her future role serving the Copyright Cartel (after Biden and the lawyers decided to privately make a police state around "IP"), writes in the White House Blog about “Intellectual Property and Risks to the Public”
She wants feedback [1, 2] and Groklaw’s Pamela Jones gives her some by writing: “Can someone show me which IP law protects ideas, as opposed to their implementation or recording in a fixed medium? Even Gene Quinn says there is no such protection. So that would be my best suggestion. PS: Patents and software need to get a divorce before they destroy innovation, particularly the FOSS development process.”
Hardware
Here is another new embargo attempt which shows what the patent system is really achieving:
German Chipmaker Infineon Technologies and its subsidiary Infineon Technologies North America have filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against Elpida Memory seeking to prevent Elpida from importing and selling certain DRAM semiconductors and products in the US.
Embargo is not innovation.
According to some other reports, Sony patents a “universal games controller” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It has something to do with an LCD touch screen.
According to a patent recently filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Sony is working on a universal game controller that could be used with competitor consoles from Microsoft and Nintendo.
A new Microsoft booster, Peter Bright, writes for Ars Technica about another new Microsoft patent, among others that receive coverage in other Web sites, e.g. [1, 2, 3].
Microsoft’s Beijing office filed a patent yesterday for an unusual little device with two distinct functions: one side is an inductive charging pad, for, say, a mouse. The other features a tiny built-in display for displaying headlines or sports scores.
It’s made in China, which is sometimes playing along with the company that commits many crimes. This greed for patents comes at a price though.
Microsoft and Its Patent Trolls
Microsoft claims that it faces over 50 lawsuits that involve patents. One of them seems likely to have Microsoft defeated shortly (next week).
Larry Oakley, editor/publisher of the WallStreetCorner.com investment site (www.WallStreetCorner.com) today reported as an Alert in his “Comment” editorial column that news surrounding VirnetX Holding Corporation’s (AMEX:VHC; www.virnetx.com) patent infringement jury trial against Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) scheduled for March 8th in Tyler, Texas has caused VHC’s stock price to surge over 40% from Oakley’s “Stock Pick” original news report published on January 16, 2010. Oakley’s latest Alert on VHC was published today, February 22, 2010 on WallStreetCorner.com’s website.
Tyler, Texas. Many patent trolls reside and/or litigate there. But the world’s biggest patent troll is actually a neighbour and friend of Bill Gates, who enjoys the presence of over 1,000 attack dogs that are small legal firms. The Business Times glorifies this troll and so does a Microsoft booster at the Seattle Times (which contains more Microsoft propaganda at the bottom of this article for example). It’s time to shut down this racketeering operation, not to hail it. █
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03.01.10
Posted in DRM, Europe, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo by The Admiralty
Summary: The BBC — now filled with former Microsoft executives — is still blocking Free software users from content that they have already paid for and at the time time it is promoting lagging products from Microsoft
THE BBC can hardly be sued (nor can it be boycotted because of the way it collects money). For quite a few years now it has taken on board employees of Microsoft UK [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], who in turn use the BBC to exclude Free software users and maybe to invite yet more Microsoft UK employees.
Last week we wrote about the latest step in blocking GNU/Linux users from BBC, essentially removing them from content that they have already paid for. The issue has since then been covered by The H and by Ars Technica, which says:
The BBC has enabled SWF Verification for its iPlayer streaming video service. This content protection mechanism has locked out users who consume the iPlayer video content with open source software.
Here is the latest development, as published this morning.
BBC Trust won’t probe iPlayer open source gripes
The governing body of the BBC has no plans to investigate the Corporation’s decision to block open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streaming in the iPlayer, despite grumbles from many UK viewers and listeners of the service.
“The decision to block open source plugins is a matter for BBC Management. The Trust has not received any complaints on this issue and has no plans to look into it further at present,” a BBC Trust spokeswoman told The Register.
This is clearly not over. What the BBC does here is without an excuse (not a valid one anyway).
Last week we showed that the BBC carried yet more Microsoft propaganda, which it only tried to correct later at the sight of typical gaps in knowledge. Here is what The Atlantic wrote about Microsoft’s propaganda; it didn’t buy it.
Do The Ends Justify The Means In Microsoft’s War On Spam?
[...]
Microsoft argued that it had linked 277 domain names to a botnet, a network of compromised computers instructed to perform a task such as denial of service attacks and sending spam e-mails. Some computers in a botnet are run by spammers themselves, but the majority are “drones” or infected computers whose owners are unable to stop or unaware of the task being performed. Microsoft alleged the domains were part of a botnet called Waledac, which the company estimates includes between 30,000 and 90,000 drone PC’s, according to The Journal.
More importantly, those “drones” are running Windows. Here is another criticism, this time from IDG News Service:
A prominent security researcher today said he doubts Microsoft’s take-down of the Waledac botnet would have any impact on spam levels, as the company claimed.
Going back to the BBC, now that Microsoft’s Natal is delayed, Jonathan Ross from the BBC keeps hyping it up:
Microsoft Project Natal demo season seems to be ramping up. Yesterday we revealed that Jonathan Ross got a Project Natal hands-on, now MTV has got its mitts on the motion-sensing system. And it claims it noticed a delay…
Watch this report: “Jonathan Ross Reveals Details About Microsoft NATAL”
The soon-to-leave BBC TV presenter, Jonathan Ross, has released some information through his Twitter account to more than half a million Twitter followers, about the launch of Microsoft’s next generation controller otherwise known as project NATAL.
This is why the BBC often seems like a marketing front for Microsoft products. Given the influx of Microsoft executives who entered the BBC, it would only be a natural thing to occur. And what is it that they promote here anyway? One of the worst consoles of all time, the Xbox 360? It not only cost Microsoft billions of dollars is losses (business failure) but it also smashed records in defect rates (technical failure). It allegedly burned down people’s houses and even killed a baby.
Based on the past week’s news, those problems persist [1, 2, 3], but Microsoft is trying to hide it. What utter negligence.
Also in recent days we found these reports about “Corrupt Mod” allegations:
Yet again Microsoft and Xbox LIVE get themselves in the news for all the wrong reasons, and this time it’s for a video that has been posted on the internet that shows an Xbox LIVE moderator taking offensive action into his own hands.
This would not be the first. And anyway, why is the BBC promoting this product so much? Because it’s associated with the United States rather than Japan? Or because Microsoft entryism has radically transformed the BBC to the point where it not only advertises Microsoft but also shuns people who use products that are not Microsoft’s? █
“We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users.”
–Ashley Highfield, BBC, now Managing Director at Microsoft UK
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02.23.10
Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents at 5:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Mono employees are already trying to put .NET inside a GNU/Linux platform that was announced over a week ago
AS we mentioned the other day, Novell wants to bring Mono to MeeGo and this is finally official. Microsoft’s MVP Miguel de Icaza formally announces this in his blog:
We just landed the support on MonoDevelop’s trunk to support developing applications that target MeeGo powered devices.
Another company that pays Microsoft for Linux is now embracing MeeGo, which means that it will pay Microsoft for the use of MeeGo. What does Nokia have to say about this? What about Intel, which writes portions of Linux? Moblin has already rejected Moonlight [1, 2, 3], whereas others celebrate the Mono line of products with this showcases for Mono. It’s like watching a tumour growing inside a healthy body; you know it shouldn’t be there, but Microsoft and Novell insist that it should. Swap “Linux” for “Mono” in the memorable quote below. █
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
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Posted in FOSS, Google, Hardware, Marketing, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Search, Ubuntu at 5:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Yahoo! Blog from Sunnyvale, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Generic license (caption added by us, with Ballmer’s words
Summary: Brainwash receives a much greater emphasis at Microsoft, a CMO role is created, and Microsoft finds new ways of deceiving the masses
“I hope Ubuntu is getting lots of money for pissing off users with irrelevant search results from Bong [sic],” says our reader Ryan regarding the Yahoo-Canonical deal [1, 2, 3, 4]. “You can tell Yahoo is Bing now, the least relevant crap ends up on top.”
The news is pretty much official that Microsoft has hijacked Yahoo!, sucking the life out of Yahoo! for its own selfish good (and regulators are unable to stop this). To an extent, Microsoft is doing something similar in Amazon, namely gradual assimilation through strategic staff appointments. They don’t adhere to the basics of human resources (HR) or maybe they just simply don’t care.
Anyway, Jerry Yang has just dumped Yahoo! shares. That’s the company he once created, before he labeled Microsoft an “agitator” and saw the company destorying his “baby”.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) holders probably never want to hear the name Jerry Yang again. Well, those same holders will love this… Tonight after the close a filing at the SEC from Yahoo! showed that Jerry Yang is going to be selling stock in the company. David Filo, the other Yahoo founder, is also selling shares. Normally insider selling or founders selling is viewed with some caution. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, and for good reason.
Microsoft’s buddy, Carl Icahn, has also dumped his shares, as we noted a few days ago (more press coverage in [1, 2, 3]). Yahoo director Ron Burkle is quiting as well, which only shows what type of damage Microsoft did the company. Also see:
i. Yahoo! Director Burkle Stepping Down
Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) director Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate, won’t seek re-election to the Internet search company’s board at the annual meeting later this year.
ii. Ron Burkle to Quit Yahoo! Board
Ron Burkle will not seek re-election to Yahoo!’s Board of Directors at the annual shareholders’ meeting this year. Burkle gave the usual reasons about other business pursuits and spending more time with his family.
“Now Microsoft, Yahoo Can Tag-Team Google,” IDG says mercilessly and it also quotes the same Microsoft-corrupted DOJ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] which blocked the Yahoo!-Google deal after intense AstroTurfing from Microsoft (political fights by secretive groups of paid-for protesters who fought for Microsoft and later got exposed). Here is the nonsense that IDG is quoting:
Bing will become a better search engine when Microsoft takes over Yahoo search, and better able to compete with search giant Google, the U.S. Department of Justice said in its decision supporting the deal.
Microsoft suffers over $2,000,000,000 in losses per year in this area. Microsoft has only itself to blame because what it shamelessly calls a “decision engine” is simply a tool for lying to the public. No wonder people don’t take it seriously. Microsoft is [p]rearranging the results such that they mock Microsoft’s competitors and hide Microsoft’s crimes. That alone is a reason to boycott Bing, as some journalists have already suggested. But Microsoft has found ways of forcing people to use its “decision engine”, namely paying carriers to remove Google as an option and probably repeating browser crimes in IE8. Microsoft also uses the Olympics again, not only to promote Silver Lie but also to make people use its “decision engine” and be indoctrinated the One Microsoft Way.
“Microsoft is [p]rearranging the results such that they mock Microsoft’s competitors and hide Microsoft’s crimes.”As usual, Microsoft will later lie about market share, citing US-only data so as to triple its real market share at least in the perceived sense. Microsoft is also using this type of deception to fraudulently enhance perception of Windows Mobile and to belittle GNU/Linux. If they are lying often enough for people to actually believe that Microsoft exceeded 10% market share in search (rather than maintained about 3%), then Microsoft believes that people are more likely to fulfill the bogus prophecy by giving Bing a try. In the same way, Microsoft discourages the industry from supporting Linux, based on some fake numbers that produce illusions.
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Microsoft has begun focusing on perception, not products. According to the news, Microsoft has just hired more marketing (i.e. deception) people from the outside [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft hires from the outside because this way it is not held accountable for overzealous behaviour (like phone-spamming that we mentioned over the weekend). Microsoft has also just created a new role, a CMO (chief marketing officer). That’s the equivalent or ministers who are responsible for lying and spinning in order for the public to think wrongly of everything and adhere to blind consent.
As part of a broader realignment of its Central Marketing Group, Microsoft on Thursday named Gayle Troberman to the newly created position of chief marketing officer.
Novell’s chief marketing officer is John Dragoon. Here is more information about Gayle Troberman:
ADOTAS – Microsoft has done some rearranging of its central marketing group and created the position of chief creative officer for Gayle Troberman, a 13-year veteran of the company who was most recently general manager for Microsoft advertising and consumer
Working for an abusive monopoly and lying on its behalf is nothing to be proud of. Steve Ballmer is about to give a keynote talk at a “Search Marketing Conference”. Will he explain to the public how he manipulated search results so as to mock everything he dislikes? That’s just Stalinist.
Two weeks ago we wrote about Microsoft's relationship with Facebook, which is becoming one of the most visited sites on the Web. Facebook will no longer allow Microsoft to spy on Facebook users for marketing reasons [1, 2], but it does embed Microsoft’s shameless “decision engine” in the site. According to another report, Microsoft also wants to buy a Facebook game developer and it tried to buy Yelp:
About two months ago, when Yelp turned down an offer from Google, there had been speculation that Yelp had received a counter offer from Microsoft.
That would allow Microsoft to rank competitors just as it demotes and mocks competitors in its so-called ’search engine’. It’s a good thing that Yelp turned down the $700+ million Microsoft offer:
When Google offered $550 million to purchase Yelp, Yelp walked away saying it had another offer.
Looks like the other offer was Microsoft. According to Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek, Yelp had “a bid north of $700 million from Microsoft.”
If Microsoft is allowed to rank other businesses and products, then it will abuse this power. That’s exactly what it’s doing with Bing. Microsoft is a morally corrupt company, based on simple evidence.
Regarding the Facebook game developer, there are several more reports about it:
Microsoft Corp. is among companies in talks to buy CrowdStar, the creator of games for social- networking site Facebook, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Microsoft is still trying to control top sites and use them in all sorts of ways, especially spying for marketing reasons. There needn’t be a tacit admission of this.
Here is Microsoft doing some new sniffing for marketing reasons:
v”Microsoft, Starcom Initiate Research On Mothers
[...]
Commenting on the initiative, Pushkar Sane, chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group said, “This is one of the many joint initiatives with Microsoft Advertising. Our strategic partnership spans across research, education, measurement and innovation. Mothers are an important audience segment for many of our clients. This initiative will help us bridge the current information gap that exists in our understanding of this key demographic.”
For those who don’t know what Starcom is:
Welcome to Starcom. We are a media communications agency that specializes in making connections between consumers and brands.
Yes, more of that very same advertising/spying business.
There is another new liaison of a similar kind — one involving the Intel-Microsoft collusion partnership [1, 2].
Today, FedScoop announced that Intel and Microsoft will be sponsoring an educational campaign focused on the present and future possibilities of cloud computing called, “Minds in the Cloud.” Each week, for 25 weeks, new High Definition (HD) interviews of influential technologists from the government, non-profit, and private sectors discussing their views on the importance of the cloud will be posted to mindsinthecloud.org.
That’s more marketing and Intel is once again helping Microsoft. It will of course be geared towards selling Microsoft software and Intel gear. It’s not about the so-called ‘cloud’, but that’s the banner under which their campaign is disguised. They sort of hijack ‘cloud’ for their own purposes, just as they do with “business intelligence” in the following new case:
Microsoft, Solver and ProfitBase are to host a business intelligence (BI) event in Los Angeles on 23 February, which will look at how companies can leverage their existing investments in Microsoft technologies.
It’s not a “business intelligence event”, it’s a business intelligence with Microsoft software event. It’s a familiar strategy of hijacking movements like the green causes in order to promote heavy fuels (reversal of causes). That’s another subject that’s to do with ethical offences in PR/AstroTurfing where smoking or carbon, for example, are described as beneficial in a way that overlaps the reasons against them, which leads to confusion. Microsoft uses these tricks to make people confused about OpenOffice.org (Office Open XML, anyone?) and “open source”. █
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02.22.10
Posted in Boycott Novell, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 12:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Gates’s refusal to adopt Adobe’s technology had something to do with money—Gates was not feeling cash rich in 1984—but it had even more to do with Gates’s persistent delusion that Windows be like the Mac.”
–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul
Summary: Microsoft’s money sinks continue to leak; present and foreseen future indicate that Zune, Xbox, and Windows Mobile are still going down the sewer
Zune
Modeling Microsoft’s mobile business based on the Zune is an atrocious mistake to make because the Zune was a disaster whose sales decline at an alarming rate. Some time earlier this month we wrote about how Zune deleted music and Microsoft is now acknowledging the problem by assigning a firm to deal with it.
Critics of subscription music have often to pointed to licensing as a major problem. Without guaranteed access, the services can often lose significant value if a licensing dispute takes certain music down or if technical issues prevent access for long stretches of time.
This is the (at least) third time Microsoft screws customers when it comes to music. Previously, there were PlaysForSure and MSN Music.
Xbox
Another area where Microsoft has failed quite miserably (although Microsoft tries to hide it) is Xbox. Sony is laughing at Microsoft’s expense and bashes its policies.
Sony’s PR strategy in the console war seems to be to point out that Microsoft is a devilish, top hat-wearing fat cat lording over the population with its giant dollar-sign labeled sacks of cash.
Back in April, Sony bashed Microsoft for purchasing most of its exclusive titles rather than creating them, and with the recent release of Mass Effect 2 has gone back to those same tactics. Rob Dyer, SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, told IndustryGamers that Sony “counters” Xbox 360 exclusives with its own first-party games, which Microsoft simply has no answer to.
The English-speaking press is fixated on US-only market share, so the overall picture can be very deceiving. Microsoft has the only console not from Japan and the US military prefers to buy stock from a US company (even if it’s really made in Asia) only to be declined:
Microsoft restricting Xbox 360 units from Army because the sale wouldn’t give them enough money?
[...]
Argue if you want, but the Xbox 360 with it’s cheap hardware, massive online gameplay and options for scenarios, and rather robust library of war games means it’s a pretty good fit as a training tool for the fine men and women training our country. Common sense also makes a might appearance. It’s simple actually. Why should the Army spend upwards of $1,000 on training computers for each and ever soldier if an Xbox 360 can be had for significantly less and be used for multiple soldiers? It’s basic math.
Microsoft was selling the consoles at a loss for quite some time. And to make matters worse, the defective design cost it billions of dollars and annoyed a lot of customers.
Here is one example of “hard luck” with Microsoft’s Xbox 360. It’s from two weeks ago:
Many in the gaming community are familiar with a common pitfall of the Xbox 360. Gamers know the syndrome simply as “the red rings of death.” The issue is common and easily remedied, and is a problem that the newest generations of Xbox 360s are supposedly free of.
So I rested easy after purchasing my 360 Arcade and a 20-gigabyte hard drive last winter, knowing that the folks at Microsoft had eliminated this frustrating problem.
Much to my dismay, I recently powered-on my system and was greeted with a distressing noise. I waited and waited but the system never advanced past the logo screen. After 5 minutes of troubleshooting, the screen flashed to black with the words “error 67” emblazoned near the bottom.
Shit, I thought. Red rings of death I can deal with, but what is this ‘error 67?’ This experience would lead me to verify what I had long suspected: Microsoft isn’t as keen on satisfying their customers as they may appear to be.
Another such error is being reported:
Players face a lot of technical errors. Microsoft must offer some kind of substitutes for their products when they simply stop working. Red ring errors can be solved but technical errors like “error 67” is difficult to tackle.
Yes, Microsoft still has a defect problem in its hands and retailers react. Not good, not good at all.
Mobile
The Windows Mobile business is also a money sink and the latest version of Windows Mobile (Microsoft has attempted to rename/rebrand it) is rather disappointing for many reasons that we wrote about before. Could it be the end of the line? Here are some opinions:
• Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series: Too little too late?
If you assume Microsoft’s mobile platform share further erodes the Windows Phone 7 launch will have to be big to compete. That’s why you hear the stray rumors about Microsoft buying Research in Motion.
• Windows Mobile 7: Too Late to Save Microsoft?
Microsoft is not too big to fail, and it has done so spectacularly in the past. While we have high hopes that whatever Steve Ballmer shows off on Monday can revive the Windows Mobile name, Microsoft will need a hell of a product and brutish PR to overcome the barriers it has already laid out for itself by sauntering into the marketplace years after the game leaders.
• Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series Is Programmed To Fail
The two bullets that Microsoft shot at its feet are:
1) Windows Phone 7 Series is a non-free or Slaveware* operating system. That means OEMs don’t get to see the code. OEMs can not customize or tweak the software to meet their customer’s needs.
2) Licence Fee. Microsoft’s deep pockets owe a lot to the heavy license fee Microsoft charges for its Operating Systems and Office Suites. Windows Phone 7 Series continues to follow the same pattern. OEMs will have to pay a license fee to Microsoft to use the operating system, along with the conditions that they can’t change the code.
The gainers at the moment are UNIX and Linux, so Microsoft seems to be copying them:
• Microsoft Mimics Apple
• Microsoft Lags Behind Apple, Again…
• IPhone, Android Gain Market-Share at Microsoft and Palm’s Expense
Here is an interesting observation from the IRC channel. Microsoft is already up to vapourware tricks on the face of it (and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 won’t actually be out before the end of the year or one year from now).
It was interesting to find that Microsoft and its bad ally AT&T [1, 2, 3] are also collaborating here [1, 2], which makes one wonder about Apple’s AT&T exclusivity.
Microsoft booster Joseph Tartakoff shut his eye in the face of criticism and pretended that “[a]lmost without exception, reviewers have praised Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7″. What does he read? Just Microsoft blogs? As we stressed last week, Android/Linux dominated this event in many ways and Microsoft’s phone received its share of criticisms. Why can’t Microsoft boosters ever be objective? In context there is more being said though:
Has Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) upstaged Google (NSDQ: GOOG) at this year’s Mobile World Congress? Almost without exception, reviewers have praised Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 series—but on Tuesday Google got its own chance in the spotlight as CEO Eric Schmidt took the keynote stage. Schmidt’s speech was thinky; holding a piece of paper with his notes, he referred to the rise of cloud computing and faster connectivity speeds as driving mobile adoption. “A device that is not connected is not interesting, it is literally lonely. An application that does not leverage the cloud isn’t going to wow anybody,” he said. “It’s like magic. All of a sudden there are things you can do that we’ve never even (thought of) because of this convergence.”
Business Insider made its “JOKE OF THE WEEK” the fact that Microsoft — unlike its free/open source competition which is technically better in many ways — intends to charge for its proprietary operating system.
Microsoft will charge carriers for its OS, while Google is giving Android away for free. (The other big competitors, Apple and RIM, don’t license their operating systems to third parties.)
Not everyone is impressed by this decision given Microsoft’s weak position (it has less than 10% of the market). Windows Mobile does not have the advantage of compatibility with many third-party applications.
Business Insider has also put up this “CHART OF THE DAY” which it titled “The Collapse Of Microsoft’s Mobile Business”. The page says:
In any event, for Microsoft, the new product can’t come soon enough. After an early lead in the U.S. smartphone war, Microsoft has lost much of its market share and almost all of its relevance, as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and Apple’s iPhone have taken over.
The market share shown there is for the US alone, it’s not global (almost double the real market share for familiar reasons). Microsoft-loving publications seem to be more fascinated by the latest Linux phones and this analysis from Reuters indicates that Microsoft may end up just buying a rival platform to replace Windows Mobile.
The new Windows phone software is a big improvement on its predecessor but may not be enough to reverse market share losses, and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) may have to eventually buy a Nokia or BlackBerry maker RIM to get back into the game.
That would require borrowing of even more money. Can Microsoft afford it? Can it get the required loans? Microsoft Nick has this to say:
Microsoft Acquiring RIM May Be Bad Idea, Says Analyst
Microsoft is reportedly interested in purchasing BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, but such an acquisition could have negative consequences for Microsoft, an analyst says.
Also in the news:
So, in conclusion, Microsoft has just introduced a new version of its mobile platform and sources suggest that it might have to be thrown away and replaced. Microsoft has already failed with Danger/Sidekick as the links below show. █
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02.19.10
Posted in Dell, Finance, Hardware, Microsoft, Office Suites, Vista 7, Windows at 2:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Dell suffers a drop in profits despite the glamorous hype and promises from Microsoft (upon releasing Vista 7)
Microsoft’s financial decline carries on [1, 2, 3, 4] as Vista 7 fails to take a recessional rebound. There are numbers that Microsoft does not want the public to see, Acer says that Windows sales were flat despite Vista 7, and a couple of weeks ago, right after Microsoft’s latest results that are dubious (Microsoft has debt), the Wall Street Journal published a report to say that business was stagnant or down for OEMs/computer makers despite the release of Vista 7.
Our reader Chips B. Malroy told us last night that there is more new evidence that Vista 7 could not have sold much. “The Dell article,” he explains, “shows that people are buying cheaper computers now. That cannot be good for MS. At some point the OEM pain of companies like Dell, will start finding ways to cut the MS profit.”
Dell profit drops despite Windows 7 PC rush
[...]
Its gross margin dropped to a relatively slim 16.6 percent as the holiday-related sales spike pushed it to sell 2 million more computers without as much profit as in the past.
It’s all about margins and it's the fault of GNU/Linux. According to another new report, Microsoft is overcharging (£30 price hike):
Microsoft got its sums wrong on the price tag for the boxed version of Office Professional 2010, forcing it to hike the product by £30.
This is classic Microsoft. Time to "whack" Dell again? █
“Bill [Gates] would go to a very senior person at these other OEMs whether it was DEC or Tandy or Compaq or whoever and yell at them or tell them it had to be this way, or if you don’t do this we’ll make sure our software doesn’t run on your box. What do you do if you’re one of these OEM guys? You’re screwed. You can’t have Microsoft not support your hardware so you better do what they say.”
–McGregor, Bill Gates’ colleague
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02.18.10
Posted in DRM, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Kernel, Mail, Microsoft, Standard at 8:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More cornerstones of Microsoft’s lock-in break apart and Outlook too is suffering from serious issues
DEPARTURES from Microsoft carry on as the company is failing [1, 2, 3, 4]. The latest Microsoft manager to jump ship will add to Amazon poison (many former Microsoft executives are moving there, e.g. [1, 2]), but the most interesting detail was his professional focus at Microsoft:
Microsoft has lost another key employee to Amazon.com. George Stathakopoulos, a computer security expert who’d been with Microsoft for nearly two decades, took a job at Amazon, Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos confirmed. Stathakopoulos was general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft and was front and center in Microsoft’s efforts to combat the Conficker worm last year.
“Trustworthy Computing Group,” eh? What an Orwellian title/name for the group.
For those who have not heard yet, Microsoft’s Xbox DRM is going down the loo. Here is one report about the subject (published yesterday):
Hardware hacker Christopher Tarnovsky just wanted to break Microsoft’s grip on peripherals for its Xbox 360 game console. In the process, he cracked one of the most heavily fortified chips ever put into a consumer device.
[...]
Its genesis came when Tarnovsky learned that manufacturers of video game controllers had to obtain a license from Microsoft for the peripherals to work on the Xbox 360. The requirement offended his sense of fair play, so he put his reverse engineering muscle to breaking it.
“I was very surprised they would put a security chip in a wired controller, as well as a wireless controller,” he said. “It’s very monopolistic what they’ve done. They have a right to do it, but I have a right to break it too.”
[...]
Using the tungsten as microscopic bridges, Tarnovsky said, he can digitally clone chips used to prevent piracy of satellite TV service, to disable unauthorized cartridges in printers – or to make Xbox game controllers.
“You could counterfeit this chip,” he said, although he stressed he had no plans to use the hack for illegal purposes.
One of our readers “thought that the boot sequence in WinTEL hardware was restricted such that unauthorised software couldn’t get on to it,” according to mail he sent us last night regarding TPM getting cracked. He adds: “Remember how dual-boot couldn’t work anymore if Bitlocker was active? It’s called Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and utilised a ‘trusted boot pathway’. Why isn’t the big story that TPM is broken?”
Well, actually, is it being reported and circulated more widely while we write this. Attempts to put TPM in Linux will hopefully fail too; it’s a case of security as lock-in, to use the words of Bill Gates. Our Linux DRM warnings go a while back as it's a curse, not a feature or a blessing. There is a similarity here.
For those who think that Microsoft DRM/TPM is the only thing breaking today, here is another one to have a field day with:
Outlook bug creates monster e-mail files
Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the e-mail program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space.
They just cannot implement things properly, can they? They also ignore mail storage standards, which helps not at all. █
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