Category Archives: Monopoly

Microsoft customer care

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Microsoft is currently running ludicrous ads on UK TV in which toy castles are built around user’s laptops — to demonstrate the company’s ‘commitment’ to security. Here’s what Microsoft’s commitment to security is really like.

Security firms have released patches for a critical loophole in Microsoft’s browser that leaves users open to attack.

The release pre-empts Microsoft which is not due to release a fix for the bug until 11 April.

The security firms said the patches were needed because hundreds of websites had been created to exploit the loophole.

So here’s Microsoft’s actual approach to security: “we take it so seriously that you will have to wait until our software-patch train comes round on its next scheduled delivery”.

The things you can do with monopoly rents

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Well, well. From The Inquirer…

US ANALYST firm iSuppli said it had ripped apart an Xbox 360 to find out just how much the components cost.

The triple core IBM CPU used in the Xbox runs at 3.2GHz, the lads reckon. This CPU costs $106 and that represents 20.2 per cent of the bill of materials (BOM) for the console.

Add in the other integrated circuits and the BOM is a staggering $340 per console.

ATI’s graphics chip costs $141 including embedded memory from NEC, a Japanese company.

Add in the DVD drive to the Xbox Premium, the RF board, the wireless controller, the cable, the literature and the packaging and the total BOM is $525.

Isuppli didn’t say how much the power cord cost.

Fact: The Xbox sells in the US for $399.

And after you’re finished mopping the bathroom floor, be sure to write up that portable music device contract

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Lovely post in Good Morning Silicon Valley…

At a court hearing to review Microsoft’s progress in meeting the sanctions imposed in a 2002 antitrust settlement, a U.S. District Court judge upbraided the company for handing some of its partners a contract that would have forced them to stop bundling rival music software with their MP3 players (see “Sorry, just an old chunk of monopolist boilerplate we had on a save string”). Microsoft maintains the contract was a gaffe, a proposal drafted by low-level business person who did not understand the company’s obligations under the antitrust settlement, which seems something of a stretch to me. “This maybe indicates a chink in the compliance process,” District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said. “This should not be happening at this point in the decree. I realize people make mistakes, but this should not be happening.”

Old habits die hard…

The Microsoft Protection Racket

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No — it’s not my headline, but one from John Dvorak, a prominent technology commentator. He’s been musing about the significance of a change in the way Microsoft approaches the provision of ‘patches’ to its flaky software. Sample:

Does Microsoft think it is going to get away with charging real money for any sort of add-on, service, or new product that protects clients against flaws in its own operating system? Does the existence of this not constitute an incredible conflict of interest? Why improve the base code when you can sell “protection”?

So what is actually going on here? I think there were some bottom-line questions that must have been brought up internally. Obviously someone at Microsoft looked at the expense of “patch Tuesday” and asked, “Is there any way we can make some money with all these patches?” The answer was “Yeah, let’s stop doing them and sell ‘protection’ instead.” Bravo! And now the company has a new revenue stream.

Donate your copy of Microsoft Office to Katrina relief!

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From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

On Friday, [Massachussetts] state officials approved a proposal to standardize desktop applications on the OpenDocument format — a move that will strip some 50,000 state computers of Microsoft’s Office and effectively eliminate Microsoft, which has chosen not to support Open Document, from the state’s procurement process. Microsoft, it should be noted, could add native support for Open Document to Office, but won’t, no doubt because doing so could encourage the spread of non-Microsoft formats. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Massachusetts’ chief information officer, Peter Quinn, said the shift to open formats was inevitable. The state runs a “vast majority” of its office and system computers on Windows — “only a very small percentage of them run Linux and other open source software at this time,” Quinn said. “This is in tune with the general market in the U.S. But we like to ‘eat our own cooking,’ in that we are using OpenOffice.org and Linux more and more as time goes along, because it produces open format documents. Microsoft has remade the desktop world. But if you’ve watched history, there’s a slag heap of proprietary companies who have fallen by the wayside because they were stuck in their ways. Just look at the minicomputer business, for example. The world is about open standards and open source. I can’t understand why anybody would want to continue making closed-format documents anymore.”

Good stuff. Lots more coming in the same vein.

Massachusetts opens up

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Well, well. This from Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

Massachusetts has announced plans to back OpenDocument, an open file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentation. In an announcement made Wednesday, state representatives said that to ensure their wide accessibility in the future, all government documents must be created in open formats by 2007. The proposal has vast implications, for the state and for open standards. “Given the majority of Executive Department agencies currently use office applications such as MS Office, Lotus Notes and WordPerfect that produce documents in proprietary formats, the magnitude of the migration effort to this new open standard is considerable,” state officials wrote in a document laying out the new strategy. “Agencies will need to develop phased migration plans with a target implementation date of January 1, 2007. In the interim, agencies may continue to use the office applications they have currently licensed. Any acquisition of new office applications must support the OpenDocument standard.”

For Microsoft, whose Office suite accounts for as much as 30 percent of its revenues, news that a populous state dumping its software is decidedly unwelcome. “I think it would be pretty risky for the state of Massachusetts to go in a direction like this without a clear look at the costs first,” Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft’s Office division, told the Financial Times. “It would seem to me that before taking such a big shift, they would look into it further.”

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he! But this is just an interesting illustration of a trend we’ve been seeing for some time.

Google grows up…

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… and becomes just another ruthless corporation? There was a lot of inane comment this week about a “Google backlash”, but the sad truth is more prosaic: Google is no longer a cheeky start-up but a multi-billion dollar outfit which will obey its founders’ prescription to “do no evil” just as long as it doesn’t impede corporate strategy. In that context, the New York Times has an interesting piece by Randall Stross. Here’s the gist:

Last month, Elinor Mills, a writer for CNET News, a technology news Web site, set out to explore the power of search engines to penetrate the personal realm: she gave herself 30 minutes to see how much she could unearth about Mr. Schmidt [Google’s CEO] by using his company’s own service. The resulting article, published online at CNET’s News.com under the sedate headline “Google Balances Privacy, Reach,” was anything but sensationalist. It mentioned the types of information about Mr. Schmidt that she found, providing some examples and links, and then moved on to a discussion of the larger issues. She even credited Google with sensitivity to privacy concerns.

When Ms. Mills’s article appeared, however, the company reacted in a way better suited to a 16th-century monarchy than a 21st-century democracy with an independent press. David Krane, Google’s director of public relations, called CNET.com’s editor in chief to complain about the disclosure of Mr. Schmidt’s private information, and then Mr. Krane called back to announce that the company would not speak to any reporter from CNET for a year.

CNET’s transgression is unspeakable – literally so. When I contacted Mr. Krane last week, he said he was not authorized to speak about the incident.

So… it’s ok for Google to profit insanely from technology which provides all kinds of information about ‘ordinary’ people. But not ok to use the technology to provide all kinds of information about Google’s CEO. And it’s ok to boycott a legitimate news outlet which reveals this fact. That looks awfully like old-style corporate Stalinism to me.

We will have to get used to the idea that Google will become as powerful in due course as Microsoft is today. And more dangerous. After all, Microsoft only screws around with your computer (if you’re daft enough to use their stuff). But Google could screw around with your privacy.

How the other 90 per cent lives…

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Email message from my college’s computer manager…

A new virus “W32/IRCBot.worm!MS05-039” is active out there and many machines in the College are already infected. Therefore, everyone is requested to update their antivirus and windows IMMEDIATELY. McAfee VirusScan 7 does not show the infection so McAfee VirusScan 8.0i (with today’s update 4560) is required to detect and remove the worm. Hijackthis, Rootkit Revealer and FPORT are not effective with the hack.

All windows machines that have not been patched with the latest MS05-039 patch are vulnerable to this worm. Please either bring them up to date with the latest MS patches and antivirus software or remove them from the network until they have been brought up to date.

The MS05-039 patch for different versions of MS Windows can be downloaded from

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-039.mspx

and the VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i can be downloaded from the following site….

And so on and so forth… To a long-term Mac/Linux user, this seems, well, quaint. What baffles me increasingly though is why so many people put up with it. On my holidays, I met several non-technical computer users who are driven to the brink of hysteria either by malware attacks, or by their inability to manage the anti-virus/firewall defences needed to combat it. I’ve learned from experience to bite my tongue, and sympathise, rather than look smug and say “Well, if you must use Microsoft software…”. For some reason, most people don’t want to hear that. Weird, isn’t it.

Microsoft goes after Tolkien

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Er, Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows, hitherto known as Longhorn, willl now be called ‘Vista’, if you please. I’m sure the awfully clever folks who came up with this daft name are aware that they tread in the footsteps of J. R. R. Tolkien, who first revealed that Vista is a part of the atmosphere that surrounds the world of Arda before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. It’s the cataclysm bit I like.