Microsoft is Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#171

Post by william42 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 8:14 PM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #88

brett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring up a hilarious caveat to "No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore." The people now afraid of MSFT are not their competitors but instead their customers.

I did a presentation a few months ago on Microsoft's DRM technology in Vista: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~mintern/601/presentation.pdf It was when I first read about that and researched it that I realized just how bad it was. It's like the customer isn't even #2 or 3 anymore. It goes something like: 1. Money 2. Killing competition (including open source) 3. Hollywood 4. Locking out hobbyists and increasing licensi…

More like this: 1. Fucking the customer then everything you mention

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#172

Post by william42 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 8:19 PM UTC

Elfan wrote: post #122

jjrs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true...what bright, iconoclastic young thinker applies for a job at microsoft these days? It's a stuffy drone corporate gig, and those are the people that'll gravitate to it.

Maybe there arn't any wizardly hackers applying for a job at Microsoft , but there are smart people interested in a steady pay check.

...most of whom are looking at Google now.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#173

Post by vzakharov » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 8:30 PM UTC

Be afraid of Microsoft or be afraid of Google - what's the difference, if you're a startup?

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#174

Post by SFBayman » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:00 PM UTC

It's always funny to see people with Apple laptops struggle to get their presentations up and running when they come to my company in hopes of a partnership.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#175

Post by dougo » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:07 PM UTC

marksashton wrote: post #119

It's intersting that you highlight GMAIL as the point where Google became scary. If anthing, GMAIL is another example of how Google's efforts outside of Search have largely failed...at least by the standard they set with Search. I used tried to find the latest marketshare numbers using Google but could't find anything current :) but as of the middle of last year they had about 2% of the Web mail market. Hmmm... Huge…

2% is not bad for a product that's still "beta".

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#176

Post by reality2345 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:24 PM UTC

Need a Dose of Reality

From TFA: "Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."

This guy needs a dose of reality. If he is "surprised" running across Windows computers, he needs to visit a business, any business. I'd say...99.9% of them use Windows. Perhaps he is just surrounding himself with counterculture hippies, or perhaps he wants to ignore reality.

From TFA: "Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops" well perhaps they need to fund more broadly. Cool is cool, but not always profitable.

From TFA: "Windows is for grandmas"...and 99.9% of corporate users, and most home users, and many students.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#177

Post by theoutlander » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:29 PM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #168

BearOfNH wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Windows Vista (tm) is going to go down in history as the best thing that ever happened to Linux. MS has done the equivalent of pointing the pistol straight at their shoes. "...How about the ability to install any of 20,000 programs from a convenient package/portage/rpm directory for free in seconds?..." Well, I tell you, it's just not that simple. Linux distributions may or may not work. Just yesterday (Frida…

I agree that there are still some quirks to work out, but you have to admit that these things have been rapidly improving. If you consider all of the software and configurations that exist for any given Linux install (a virtually infinite number), then you have to admit that Linux has come a long way in about 15 years. After all, Microsoft had a 10-15 year head start and the advantage of being able to throw money at…

Well, I agree with you that MSFT has had that head start and considering the situation they really are far behind!! I am using RedHat for production and I love it!! I use Fedora at home on a x64 dual-core and I have had a few issues, but they all have a workaround and my experience is great with Fedora....even freeBSD on the same box is PERFECT! However, one thing I don't understand is why do they come out with SO MANY flavors of Linux....why not imrovise what is out there?? Is there really a need for Ubuntu & Gentoo when there are so many other flavors that are good including Fedora (I know they are heading the windows route! LOL)... ???

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#178

Post by busy_beaver » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:34 PM UTC

gregshortdotcom wrote: post #152

Your observation that Macs and Linux machines outnumber computers running Windows is either humorously incorrect, or an outright lie. I work at a newspaper and the only people using Macs are the graphic designers. The rest of us, the vast majority of the company, use Windows. You need look no further than any old web stats program to see who is online. (A quick look in Omniture at the stats for our newspaper web site…

"I work at a newspaper"

Which is another dying industry, in case you hadn't noticed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/media/26paper.html?ex=1176091200&en=870eff3de332e892&ei=5070

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8HFM6GOB&show_article=1

http://www.journalism.org/node/797

I work at an R1 research institution. When I attend talks in EE and CS (i.e., the ones attended by the guys doing research for tomorrow's technology), I see essentially nothing but Linux and Mac notebooks. 3-4 years ago it was about 50-50 Linux and Windows, rarely a Mac.

I don't think Graham is disputing that there are a lot of Windows machines out there (in fact, I seem to remember the article explicitly acknowledging this). He's talking about tomorrow, not today.

I'll bet if someone had visited your newspaper 25 years ago they'd have seen CP/M or Wang systems.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#179

Post by ar » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:36 PM UTC

Microsoft has just moved-on in scope. If you're running a $60B business and you need to grow it to make shareholders happy, you look for the next $10B business. A small project would be something that is a $1B business. It's an amazing scale--growing your business by a billion dollars is less than 2% growth and barely moves your stock price (you know, the CEO's goal).

In the space of YCombinator, start-ups are lucky to be targeting a tenth of that small move. They're not dangerous to those players because they've simply stepped beyond that level of playing the game. Sure, one of those start-ups could emerge to be the next big idea, but Microsoft can afford to sit back and acquire them or jump into the market when they see the opportuntity, after a couple attempts at a profitable model have assumed some of the risk. They have no need or incentive chase every little opportunity. Their not going to get it right every time, they missed both online auctions (eBay) and walk-up ad serving (Google), but missing these hardly renders the company dead or irrelevant.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#180

Post by knewter » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 9:46 PM UTC

Elfan wrote: post #118

fuzzyman wrote: post #106

I think the death of the desktop is much exaggerated. AJAX is better than the last generation of web-apps, but the browser still basically sucks as a platform. Latency is a bitch. :-)

But is it unsucky enough in a "worse is better" sort of way?

There are, for me, quite a few reasons it's unsucky enough in a 'better is better' sort of way these days. I use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks, and I keep a detailed bookmarks toolbar folder categorized into tons of nested folders. Thousands of bookmarks by now I'm sure. I also use deskbar so I can just start typing the title of one of my bookmarks to launch it. This is far more intuitive for me than any previous way of running web applications, and the level of organization and interoperability I've achieved between all the apps I use (most of which have some form of live collaboration built in these days) makes any computer I'm ever at just feel right.

I feel there's money (or fame, failing that) to be made in a competitor to or addition to foxmarks that allows feeds of bookmarks to be easily subscribed to, so I could distribute a bunch of links in structured format to a development team, say, right in their web browser, that they could all collaborate on. Would take very little effort, and at least I myself could see immediate benefit.