After the Less is More conference, Microsoft took us out to dinner — in the Duxford aircraft museum. We dined beneath a B29 bomber of the type that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Strange experience. Nice meal though.
Category Archives: Microsoft
Microsoft goes for Sony’s jugular
Nice USA Today report on Redmond’s latest attempt at a pre-emptive strike. Excerpt:
To muscle Xbox into contention, Microsoft has absorbed about $2 billion in losses the past four years. Now the software giant is making a bold move to jump ahead of Sony by initiating the next cycle of gaming consoles.
On Thursday night, actor Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame will host a celebrity-packed MTV special at which Wood is expected to unveil the all-new Xbox. Widely expected to be called the Xbox 360, it should hit store shelves in time for Christmas.
But much more than dominance of the game-console business is at stake. Whoever sells the most consoles in this cycle could also lock up prime access to the burgeoning digital entertainment market.
Microsoft has been on a three-year mission to ingrain Windows Media Center PCs as the nerve center for digital entertainment. And it is maneuvering the new Xbox to be a linchpin in helping consumers manage music and movie files stored on a PC in the den.
Meanwhile, Sony, in partnership with IBM and Toshiba, is developing something called the Cell processor — expected to be an all-purpose “brain” for video games and consumer electronic devices, much as Intel’s Pentium processor is for PCs.
Er, the Naughton household has had a ‘Media Center’ for some years. It’s called a Macintosh!
Slashdotted!
Since there are no Nobel prizes in my line of business, the next best thing is to be Slashdotted. And it happened today! That’s twice in one lifetime (the first time was when I wrote about the leaked Microsoft memos on the threat to Redmond’s business model posed Linux and Open Source software). Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead!
Later: And now we’re on BoingBoing. Verily, my cup runneth over.
Quote of the day
Absolutely not.
Bill Gates, responding to a question about whether his new friendship with U2 singer Bono would entice him to buy one Apple’s black-and-red U2 edition iPods.
Quote of the day
We’re not going to spend taxpayers’ money on a program so that Microsoft can further consolidate its monopoly. It’s the government’s responsibility to ensure that there is competition, and that means giving alternative software platforms a chance to prosper.
Sérgio Amadeu, president of Brazil’s National Institute of Information Technology, the agency that oversees the Brazilian government’s technology initiatives.
From a New York Times article on the Brazilian government’s resolute stand on Open Source software.
‘N’ for neutered?
According to an Associated Press report, Microsoft will use a the letter “N” to designate Windows XP versions stripped of the company’s media player to comply with an antitrust judgment from the European Union.
The agreement with the EU came after antitrust regulators rejected Microsoft’s first choice, “Windows XP Reduced Media Edition,” on grounds it would discourage sales and mislead customers.
The player-free operating system will simply go by “Windows XP Home Edition N” and “Windows XP Professional Edition N” – the “N” standing for “not with media player.”
Microsoft’s subliminal message: an exegesis
Such a helpful page from Redmond giving “Six Tips for Buying an MP3 Player with Flash Memory”. In the interests of objectivity, the Apple Turns Blog has provided an even more helpful crib, to which I am happy to add. Let’s take the six ‘tips’ in turn, shall we?
1. Understand the basics.
For the active person, a player that uses flash memory to store music has distinct advantages over a player that uses a hard disk. Simply put, flash memory players have no moving parts, meaning that you can take them jogging and your music won’t skip.
Translation: Don’t buy an iPod, which has a nasty hard drive for storing thousands of songs, compared with the measly hundreds you can fit on a flash player.
2. Make sure you’re getting all the goodies.
Many portable music players can do more than just play music. Some players have a built-in voice recorder, FM recorder, or stopwatch. And some come with extra accessories like high-quality headphones, a belt clip, or an armband. Because most of these features are included at no additional cost, make sure the device you choose is filled with these fun extras.
Translation: you just won’t be happy unless your player can record FM radio and includes, for some reason, a stopwatch. And it just so happens that iPods don’t do any of these things.
3. You’ll want a display.
When you have hundreds of songs on your player, you really need an easy way to select your music by artist, album, or genre. This is critical if you want to find that one song or artist you really want to hear. A display also comes in handy when you’re looking for your favorite radio station.
Translation: don’t buy a nasty iPod shuffle, even if it doesn’t have a hard drive (see 1 above) because it doesn’t have a display.
4. Let a professional make your next playlist.
Having an FM radio lets you put your player on autopilot as you mountain bike, cycle, or rollerblade. And when you’re sweating it out on the stationary bike at your health club, you can listen to the program airing on the club’s TV. You want to have something that is fun, lightweight, and flexible. And FM radio is a key feature that many players offer at no extra cost, even for less than $100.
Translation: why listen to your own music when you can listen to nonstop commercials and obnoxious local DJs on FM radio? And record them digitally, so you can share that great beer jingle with your friends and loved ones?
5. Pick the right size for you.
The price of a player will depend on its storage capacity—the more megabytes (MB) of storage it has, the more music it can hold and the more it will cost. If you’re ripping your own CDs, using a player with Windows Media Audio (WMA) support as well as MP3 support gives you the most music per megabyte.
Translation: Windows Media is great, and we just wanted to harp on that for a minute. Have we mentioned that Windows Media is great? And it’s much better than that nasty compression stuff used by Apple.
6. Don’t get locked into one online store.
Have you ever been on the hunt for a particular song? Some obscure indie rock tune or rare jazz performance you heard on the radio? You might have to shop at more than one store before you find the song you’re looking for. Having the flexibility to choose from over 1 million tracks of music from multiple online music stores such as MSN Music, Napster, MusicMatch, and Wal-Mart can be the key to getting the music you want. Several stores even offer subscription services so you can download all the songs you want for about the cost of a CD each month. If you buy a device that has the PlaysForSure logo, you’ll know that you can use it with your choice of PlaysForSure music stores.
Translation: it is, however, just fine to get locked into one proprietary data format and DRM scheme– as long as it’s ours. And be sure to avoid that nasty iTunes store.
Summary:
1. Don’t buy an iPod, iPod mini, or iPod photo.
2. Don’t buy an iPod shuffle.
3. Don’t buy an iPod shuffle.
4. Don’t buy an iPod shuffle.
5. Pick the right size for you (as long as you don’t buy an iPod shuffle).
6. Don’t buy an iPod of any kind whatsoever. And don’t buy songs from Apple.
Software patents — the sordid reality (contd.)
Owen Barder’s Blog pointed me towards an instructive post in Groklaw. It concerns the pressure Microsoft allegedly applied to Denmark’s Prime Minister in order to soften his government’s opposition to the European Commission’s Directive on software patents. Groklaw runs this translation of an article in a Danish newspaper.
The founder of the world’s largest software company, Bill Gates, is now ready to shut down Navision in Denmark and move around 800 developers behind Denmark’s biggest software success to the US.
The Microsoft leader made that clear, when he meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Economic and Business Minister Bendt Bendtsen and Science Minister Helge Sander in November.
The threat risks being executed if part of the IT business manages to block the disputed EU directive on patenting software, that Microsoft wants so dearly, but time and time again has been postponed thanks to efficient lobbying by anti-patent opposition.
“If I am to keep my development center in Denmark, I must have clarity on the rights issue. Otherwise I will move to the US, where I can protect my rights,” said Gates according to to Microsoft Chief Attorney Marianne Wier, who also attended the meeting with Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
If this is true, the results were mixed. On the one hand, the Danes did back off; on the other, staff in Microsoft’s Danish operation started to panic over the future (or otherwise) of their jobs. This prompted an emergency email to all staff from a senior Microsoft executive which (according to a leaked copy) reads:
Dear all,
You may have seen the front page article in Børsen today with the headline: Gates threatens to move Navision. The article outlines how the current EU disagreement over software patent protection endangers our development centre here in Vedbæk. Let me be very clear about this:
Microsoft has absolutely no plans to move the centre.
We are completely committed to Vedbæk and its current location.
The journalist has linked Microsoft’s known and outspoken attitude towards patent protection with some internal disagreements in EU regarding this software patent.
Microsoft is very much in favour of software patent protection – we believe this is the only way to ensure innovation and development of state-of-the-art software. Bill Gates has spoken of this numerous times in different situations. And yes, he has also made our opinion very clear to the Danish government. Let there be no doubt that Microsoft believes patent protection is necessary in order to protect our innovative work. We will continue to argue in favour of this but it is not the only aspect which we consider when investing in R&D.
If patents were the only thing determining where we locate our development sites then we would probably not have a site in China or in India.
I just wanted to briefly reassure you – you have absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of Vedbæk’s future. We are in dialogue with the journalist whom we hope to be able to present a more nuanced picture of the situation.
Don’t you just love the word “nuanced’! Note the clue that the boys in Redmond regard the Indians and the Chinese as a bunch of no-good pirates. And isn’t it interesting to learn that Microsoft intends to break the habits of a corporate lifetime and take up “innovation”?
Software patents — the reality
If you wondered how Bill Gates topped the Forbes rich list for the 11th year with a personal fortune of US$46.5 billion ($63 billion), look no further than the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office.
Patent 525484, accepted by the office and now open for objections until the end of May, says Microsoft invented and owns the process whereby a word-processing document stored in a single XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML.
It is one of a raft of patent applications Microsoft has dumped on the overworked staff of the office, and on patent offices worldwide.
So who really wrote MS-DOS?
A new twist on an old story. The pivot is that Microsoft’s fortunes were originally founded on MS-DOS, the operating system the company produced for the IBM PC and its clones in 1981. The irony is that when IBM came calling to buy an operating system, Microsoft didn’t have one, but Bill Gates went round the corner to Seattle Computer Products, which had written a DOS for the Intel 8086 chip that was to power the new PC, and bought it outright for a piffling sum (I think it was $50k). It was called Seattle Computing Products DOS. One of the great stories in the industry is that the IBM guys had called first at Digital research, Gary Kildall’s company in California, which had produced the first real microcomputer operating system (CP/M) to see if he was interested in developing a 16-bit version for the PC. But when the suits called, Kildall was out flying his plane and his wife (who answered the door) refused to sign the Non Disclosure Agreement that the IBM guys insisted on before they would open the conversation.
So we have two ironies: 1. How Kildall missed the chance to hit the big time; and 2. How the brass-necked Gates, who didn’t have an operating system, acquired one double-quick and sold it to IBM while retaining the right to sell it to other computer manfacturers.
But there is a third strand, which is the question of how Seattle Computer Products DOS came to be written. In his book, They made America, Harry Evans told the story about Kildall and Gates and the Seattle DOS which he described as a “slapdash clone” and “rip-off” of Kildall’s CP/M operating system. Now Tim Paterson, the software’s main author, has sued Evans and his publisher (Random House) for defamation. Evans says he will vigorously contest the case. Stand by for the public laundering of some very interesting dirty linen.