331–340 of 454 posts
Paul Graham is the Ann Coulter of the Web 2.0 world. Formula for success: 1) Write/say something controversial 2) Leverage the idea into a book 3) Profit!
It's pretty obvious to the MILLIONS of developers and hackers that not only survive but thrive in the Windows world that you really have ignored them for your entire career. You live in one ecosystem we live in another, The main difference between us and you is that you feel it necessary to throw stones at us (or in this case verbal diarrhea) every so often and we are happy to let you live in your world, and respect…
I mean, either the definition of "hacker" has expanded quite liberally, or we should start seeing a slew of awesome apps start rolling out any minute now...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, this is obviously the viewpoint of someone who is not at all familiar with gift societies, someone who seems to me to be desperately clinging to a dogmatism in order to convince him- or herself that his or her life has been lived in a moral manner. The truth is that it's not all black and white. Socialist != Evil, and Capitalist != Good. You speak of corporations bringing happiness to people, but I would like to…
"In summary, my problem is not with capitalism, and I am not a socialist. I merely fear that the inevitable end of capitalism is the type of corporate society that has been steadily evolving in the U.S. and elsewhere, one in which paper and numbers are more important than people." You contradict yourself. Obviously you have a problem with capitalism because you beleive people should be forced at gunpoint to live the…
Yes M$ dying has to do somethng with Karl Marx, too - let me put aside "sick and twisted" for a moment. Not even prime flagships of economy, which of BitGeek knows about, weren't able to undermine one simple sentence from Marx's "Das Kapital" - Only (human) labour and labour only can produce new value. Not money - labour. There is no need, I presume, to point out the quantity of labour pumped into the "market" since early 1990's on radically different principals then ones driving the dead.
Another view could also come from the economy principals. Shortly it is a story of smart and dumb monopols. The smart ones optimize the production level - the dumb ones optimize the profit. The dead rocketed profit (and extra-profit) sky high.
Personally I do not thik that the future is in web-based IT. It simply is not cost effective - why the hack should I have powerfull desktop just to run application on the server. For me it server centric IT was already seen and the come back is (could be) no more than a cycle in everladting evolution of IT.
I am a fantastic believer in history telling us about the future. And in this case, history says, Microsoft will always be key to a desktop centric world. And desktop centricity is cyclical. For now Web 2.0 seems to have the baton, but as we nove into a very rich multi-media world we will become constrained by the broadband pipes. This will push apps, content, and everything else back to the user device, be it a Windows PC or a Windows Pocket PC. Apple stole the march with the single purpose iPod (don't pretend video or anything else on the iPod is a killer App), but Microsoft still own the multi-purpose device.
DRM has been the Achilles Heel of Microsoft. As they have come back from many Anti-Trust cases they attempted to sidestep more brouhaha in the world of Digital Media, and have attempted to play fair (don't get me wrong I know they usually do not play fair). This has allowed Apple to gain the upperhand in Music Devices. But, as Apple are now breaking the mold on this to allow DRM-free sales from EMI, they in turn will have just given Microsoft the opening it will need to reinforce its position. It wont be success through intent, as I believe that the Zune player will fail. But a new competitive ecosystem of devices will lead everything back to the desktop as the hub.
No matter what, no-one is going to trust their personal memories, be it music, video or photo's entirely to the Web. They will share it there, but not leave it there.
Microsoft is back where they were when Netscape first launched, they are the slow lumbering laggard.
But as history shows us, they turned themselves around, and owned (however briefly) the mindset of everyone who had money to spend (and this is not typically your 15-year old Web 2.0 consumer with no money), it was the corporates, with their large cheque books.
Google are moving more and more to follow the Microsoft lead. Microsoft is far from dead, but like all parents who have given life to others (such as Google, albeit through removed ways), they from time to time will be less involved in their Children's lives. But, they will always retain some criticality in their lives. MS will never really die in our lifetimes. They just move from being the soul point of attention.
Good luck to your startups, but imagining them operating in a world where they do not know and respect the importance of Microsoft, and try to emulate or utilise them in their goals, seems like a recipe for failure to me.
What has helped the market more than Apple or Linux is this: desktop applications have standardized and the conversion tools make even programs like excell (with macros and arrays) interchangable with other nock off products. Thanks goes to the unknowns that supply open source that is interchangeable with MS products. If this was not avaialble every business would be locked into one desktop and that would likely still be MS Office.
I guess I'm in the younger half, because on reflection, I realize that not only do I agree, but that this is old news to me. I'm not complaining, though -- this article made me realize something I didn't know consciously. A lot of commenters here seem to argue that Microsoft still has the vast majority of desktop installations, and that this isn't likely to go away soon. I agree (I don't like it, but I think it's tru…
I think this is a little bit ironic. One of Paul's YCombinator companies, Loopt.com is using Microsoft/IIS 6.0 and Paul has been touting them to be one of the best of his startup investments. I agree with you on this one Paul, Loopt.com is the only one that is actually doing something real. Another startup that just caught Techcrunch attention (and apparently got financed because the company has a real business model…