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Microsoft is Dead

paulgraham.com

371–380 of 454 posts

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#371
Seems way to early to declare them dead. Have you never watched a basketball game where momentum shifts and the dominant team is on the ropes, but it's only halftime. There's plenty of time to come storming back. In other words, the game isn't over. It's way too early to call them dead.

Based on your assumptions, if they are indeed dead or headed inexorably in that direction, then why aren't we all using thin clients connected to superfast pipes running ajaxified code? Perhaps, it doesn't always work that well?

I guess all these web2.0 companies, y-combinator included, didn't use powerpoint for their deck? Or the execs don't run windows mobile 5.0 on their smartphone?

You make a lot of valid points but you omit a lot in the analysis and you get kinda religous about it all.

When a team declares victory just by taking the lead... you know that team is scared.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#372
Seems way to early to declare them dead. Have you never watched a basketball game where momentum shifts and the dominant team is on the ropes, but it's only halftime. There's plenty of time to come storming back. In other words, the game isn't over. It's way too early to call them dead.

Based on your assumptions, if they are indeed dead or headed inexorably in that direction, then why aren't we all using thin clients connected to superfast pipes running ajaxified code? Perhaps, it doesn't always work that well?

I guess all these web2.0 companies, y-combinator included, didn't use powerpoint for their deck? Or the execs don't run windows mobile 5.0 on their smartphone?

You make a lot of valid points but you omit a lot in the analysis and you get kinda religous about it all.

When a team declares victory just by taking the lead... you know that team is scared.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#373
Ok, but are we trading Microsoft's monopoly for Google's? Google essentially controls (or plans to control) search and online advertising, which of course feed off each other like Windows and Office did. Just becuase Google has Web 2.0 street cred doesn't mean they are benign.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#374
there's no comment link for your cliff notes (http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html) followup so i will comment here.

you seem to be back-pedaling with this cliff-notes post. so you are going to be the first to "call it"... call what exactly? that seems to be your cliff notes discussion... it required several paragraphs to define what you mean. nobody is going to remember what you exactly called.

you say the following... "When I said that Microsoft was dead, I meant they had, like IBM before them, passed across into this underworld."

so you are basically saying now that ibm is dead... in which you define it as "people at the leading edge of the software business no longer have to think about them."

i guess many would disagree with you on what "leading edge" or relevance in software is about. if you think these web2.0 companies, then perhaps, then many will disagree with you whether there's much new tech coming out of these web 2.0 companies.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#375
Short sighted. Although Linux is making significant rounds for servers in the corporate world Microsoft is still the office PC leader. web 2.0 will never break into this coporate niche just due to the flow of information out of the secure office. However this is not to say the application can not come IN house. This is how they must be sold to corporations. That and the price of training new hires on the linux based platform with web apps.

If enough companies train enough people then the "we use microsoft because everyone knows it" excuse will be out the window.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its very difficult to be honest and altruistic when your sole reason for being is to make money. This is the motivation for these men that run businesses. Or do you suppose their motivation is to bring happiness to people? Morals and money dont really mix very well. When a companies board of directors sit down to discuss the bottom line, how often do you think moral issues are discussed? Ive never heard any in all my…

That's a very sick and twisted view of the world-- and it is from Karl Marx. The reality is, you make money when you bring happiness to people. You make people happy and they want to give you money they want to buy more of your products because they want to keep being made happy again, or made even more happy. Thus, the happier you make your customers the more money you make. Further, making people happy, and making…

You seem to labor under a few misconceptions.

Sure, you CAN make money while bringing happiness to the people. As long as it doesn't touch you bottom line, that is. There is a landmark legal case from 1916 (Dodge vs Ford), that's now codified in most countries, that's illustrative of corporations priorities.

Ford (the man) wanted to use some of his company's huge profits to do good and make the customers happy. He paid his workers more than the going rate and reduced the price on the company's cars. He figured his company wouldn't have been where it was if it hadn't been for his customers. So this was a way for him to say "thank you" and be a responsible community citizen.

He got sued by some of Ford's (the company) stock holders, who argued that Ford (the man) had no business giving away their money, however good his intentions, and however happy the customers (in this case) would be. The stock holders won handily, and Ford (the man) was severely rebuked by the judge. So the law nowadays expressly forbids companies to do anything that may jeopardize the bottom line and the stock owners dividends.

Of course, companies can make people happy _as long as that's the best way to make more money_. But given the choice of making a lot of money while making customers happy and making more money by screwing them the corporations have no (legal) choice but to screw the customers.

As to your definition of altruism, that will have to stand for you. It's not a definition shared by very many. If you continue to use words with a definition you invent yourself, it's going to be difficult to communicate meaningfully with your peers. Not that I believe true altruism actually exist. But self interest can frequently masquerade as altruism quite effectively, and be virtually indistinguishable from it.

Your implied idea that capitalism has some monopoly on "free" trade is also so patently ridiculous that I can't even be bothered to comment on it.

And as to "free choice" in the capitalist countries of today, what choice do I have, for example, if I want to watch my movies, or TV shows, or sports events, or news without commercials? None. Other than that Alaskan cave you mention. And even if I take the draconian step of not watching TV at all, because I dislike the commercials so much, I STILL have to pay for those commercials every time I go shopping. Some choice, huh? I can give you more examples like this if you're interested.

And returning to trade. You're not , even in the US, allowed to trade in everything you like. You're for example forbidden to trade in heroin, where you actually face that gun you were speaking about if you don't comply (or his brother, the chair). But maybe that's socialism, what do I know?

As a concluding remark, I find it interesting that everytime any of the serious organizations (american mostly) compile reports on the happiest countries in the world, the US are beaten by this or that "socialist" country. But I guess these organizations must be socialist themselves. An no, I'm not paranoid. I swear! They're REALLY out to get me!!!

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#378
yes this is true. the desktop has gone. but you make your analysis trough a little hole in the wall (window?) from this little hole it seems that web2.0 euphoria is indeed due to microsoft monopol lost. High bandwith - everything on the net - microsoft application cloned online.unleashed creativity applied to no rule game, again.. ok. now walk back and see how much microsoft is more than desktop software and has already took submarine advanced positions in the future concurrential world.(PWC, NFC). Desktop - all net - ? dont underestimate people with glasses.

Inside the bubble - insider joy. outside the bubble - outsider again.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#379
I am disappointed that you came up with The Cliff Notes. John Dvorak has been saying that for a while. Thanks for the link to http://live.com. I typed in "microsoft is dead" and got a whole lot of irrevelant articles. Google had yours at the top along with Dvorak's. Gave me a good laugh.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#380

The rest of us will just think that you are pushing your agenda, and therefore, your own view of the world. Is it a coincidence a Web 2.0 investor supports an evangelically blinkered approach to non Web 2.0 solutions. 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…

You know, I could take that postingand make some wording changes.

"And, in this case, history says, IBM will always be key to a central computing-centric world....For now minicomputers seem to have the baton, but as we move into a very rich data environment....No matter what, no-one is going to trust their corporate data entirely to desktop computers. They will share it there, but not leave it there." and so forth.

This would have seemed very plausible thirty years ago, when IBM was dominant. And, indeed, nobody pushed IBM out of the dinosaur pens. There are still IBM mainframes out there, and they don't have much competition in the mainframe business. Of course, IBM wasn't pushing anything as relatively bad as Vista in those days.

Microsoft isn't going to die because of being pushed off the desktop, unless they do it themselves with increasingly unusable operating systems. They will cease to be relevant as applications become less tied to the underlying desktop OS, much as IBM ceased to be relevant as data became less tied to the central mainframe.

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