Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

Late to the party (only in part because my copies of Information Week tend to be 400 miles away), I find this gift from Steve Ballmer:

"We're not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been."

Paul McDougall posted more back on October 20th. The money quote, which immediately follows the Ballmer quote above:

Say what? Hang on a sec, would you please, Dear Reader.

Thanks -- I'm back. I just had to go dump a few thousand Microsoft shares. [Disclosure: I don't really own Microsoft shares, but if I did ...]

Personal full disclosure: I sold my shares the day after the crooks running the Second Circuit decided to overturn Judge Jackson's ruling on grounds that he was being mean to MSFT, since anyone who looked at the company then could see that breaking it up would have helped.

For more on how MSFT's monopolistic competition has hurt itself and its suppliers, see my post yesterday at AB. Or just, in Tom's words, "Get a Mac!"

Labels: MSFT

by Ken Houghton

The short list of "challenges" I won't send in response to this query, even with its opening:

Today, I'm not here to create another discussion topic dealing with how Vista sucks or how peripherals aren't working because they don't have drivers for Vista, or how I want to revert to XP again, and so forth. [T]his week's topic stems from a forum discussion created by CNET member chustar, who wants to know if there are any folks out there who are part of a silent, Vista-loving majority and would like to express their enthusiasm for it. He has used Vista for close to a year without any problems and simply loves it. I'm sure he's heard enough of the bashes on Vista and would like to take this opportunity to hear from the people who actually are using Vista and, quite frankly, like it or love it

Realizing that not having anything to publish next week would be embarassing, Koo adds:

Now remember, folks this discussion is, for the most part, based on the positive experiences around using Vista, but not just limited to that. So I ask that you please be civil in your replies and be considerate of others when posting.

So here would have been my list of positive things about Vista:

1. It has given me a new appreciation of Linux systems
   
2. It has confirmed that Bill Gates and/or Steve Ballmer really were good at finding products for MSFT, since the results since they moved to being upper management have been a monopolistic version of the Peter Principle
   
3. It has given me a new appreciation of those cute little Apple computers.
   
4. It has proved that the OEMs are still dumb enough to believe anything they are told by MSFT. (Releasing Vista OSes on a machine that can handle a maximum of two MB of RAM should, in itself, put several firms out of business.)
   
5. It has given me a greater appreciation of Unix systems
   
6. It has reminded users who had forgotten with the NT4.0-XP that MSFT systems require Constant Vigilance.
   
7. It has given me a greater appreciation of XP
   
8. It has demonstrated that Judge T. P. Jackson was correct, and that the Fourth Circuit and the Bush Justice Department are not working in the best interest of the long-run survival and growth of United States corporations.
   
9. I has given me a greater appreciation of Sun systems
   
10. It has returned us to the Good Old Days where you could make a cup of coffee, have a conversation with your family, and catch up on your reading—and that's just waiting for it to boot up.
    
11. It has given me a greater appreciation of OpenOffice 2.0 and GoogleDocs, since the money spent on that 2 Meg of RAM (see point 4 above) would otherwise have gone to buying MS-Office.

Feel free to add to or correct this list in comments.

Labels: Apple, competitive advantage, computers, Linux, Monopoly, MSFT, technology

by Ken Houghton

A TCO analysis to make MSFT quiver in its boots (even though their methods are much less transparent).

Go. Read.

(Better yet, think of it as the Answer Vocal to this post from Chris Anderson.)

Labels: just life, MSFT

by Ken Houghton

(The following true story is posted due to What Windows Vista Does For Me.)

UPDATE II: Chris at MSFT, who is either one hour ahead of me or 11 hours behind, was wonderful yesterday in getting the laptop back to where it should have been all along.

He was also far too honest. Me: "How much RAM do you need to run Vista?" Him: "At least a Gig. Probably two."

Shira's laptop has been fairly useless for the past couple of weeks, claiming that the OEM copy of Windows Vista is "not genuine." We've used workarounds for a while, but this weekend was Time To Take Action:

Act I, Scene 1

Saturday late afternoon:

Attempt several times to use the links suggested by MSFT. After searching through multiple screens, find the Technical Support number.

Call MSFT Support. Surely this is an easy issue to solve, and they will Know What to Do.

Three to six menu options later: "Our Technical Support line is closed. Our hours on weekends are 6:00am to 3:00pm, Pacific time. Please try your call again then."

Scene 2: The Manufacturer

HP/Compaq takes a while, but at least tells you from the start they they offer 24/7 service. It takes a while to figure out that I'm calling about a Compaq C2500. (Compaq no problem; model numbers should be hidden, apparently.) No wait time indication on the line; several suggestions that I should be thrilled to buy their Total Care Package, their Television sets, and possibly a stray bugging device or two. Roughly six Total Care ads, three television set promotions, a couple of random moments, and several Gene Hackman imitations later, the obligatory Subcontinent-accented "support" person comes on the telephone.

A roundelay ensues in which he tells me to keep tapping F8 while rebooting the machine. I attempt to make it clear that this is a Vista machine with MSFT-spec'd memory, and that rebooting therefore lasts only slightly less time than a Ken Burns "documentary." But he has a script, and I keep trying.

Me: "The screen is blank."
Him: "What do you see?"
Me: "A blank screen."
Him: "Keep hitting F8. And try turning the machine off and on again." (I have, by this point, pulled the battery twice.)

Finally, we get to the right screen.

Me: "There are multiple options. Are we running diagnostics?"
Him: "How about Safe Mode."

I silently note that I have tried bringing the machine up in safe mode several times in the past few weeks, and it doesn't appear to have helped.

Him: "When you bought the machine, did you register it and call MSFT?"
Me: "We registered it online, yes. What do you mean, call MSFT?"
Him: "You were supposed to call MSFT and register your copy of Vista."
Me: "There's nothing in the registration or the documentation that said that."
Him: "You were supposed to do it. You'll have to call MSFT."

By this point, I'm wondering why he didn't tell me this fifteen minutes ago, not to mention being rather irritated that it's now being described as my fault.

Him: "I'll give you the number."
(He gives me a different number than the one called in I, i)
Me (encouraged): "Thank you."

The number turns out to be Microsoft SALES. When I get through to where I need to be, we are again at "Our Technical Support line is closed. Our hours on weekends are 6:00am to 3:00pm, Pacific time."

UPDATE: Credit where due: HP Support recognizes that they have an issue, and they set up a Case Number and follow-up calls to ensure it is resolved.

Act II: Sunday afternoon

MSFT Technical Support, whose motto is "We're a monopoly, so we can afford to provide the worst service and call ourselves the best company."

Several moments of information being given to the suport person. After gathering which she finally says:

MSFT Rep (cheerfully): "You need to call the MSFT Genuine Advantage Support Team. But they're not available on weekends."
Me, irritated: "So you can't provide any support?"
MSFT (even more cheerfully): "No. I'll give you their telephone number."
Me: "When are they open?"
MSFT (approaching orgasm): "The number is..."
Me: "And what hours are they open?"
MSFT (having climaxed, through her cigarette): "They're open from 9 to 5."
Me (having dealt with the MSFT telephone system): Is that Eastern or Pacific time?"
MSFT (taken aback, as if it shouldn't be an issue): That's Pacific time."

The chance of my buying another Vista machine, or any hardware from HP again, is fading by the day.

Labels: Monopoly, MSFT, technology, Vista

by Ken Houghton

I recently re-programmed the touchpad of my laptop for left-handedness. (The right click is virtually dead; it's a useful and fairly straightforward workaround.)

So why is it that when the house is over the Wireless Network Connection it still tells me to RIGHT-click for more options?

Labels: humor, MSFT

by Ken Houghton

While Robert Barro fellates MSFT (though not Bill Gates) in the WSJ (h/t Mark Thoma via DeLong), saner heads note that arguing a Consumer Surplus requires making a positive contribution to the commonweal:

Over the last two months Microsoft and a cadre of high paid lobbyists have been working a full-court press in Albany in an attempt to bring about a serious weakening of New York State election law. This back door effort by private corporations to weaken public protections is about to bear fruit....

In an earlier blog I wrote about Microsoft's unwillingness to comply with New York State's escrow and review requirements. Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying “we won't comply with your law” but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests. Microsoft's attorneys drafted an amendment which would add a paragraph to Section 1-104 of NYS Election Law defining “election-dedicated voting system technology”. Microsoft’s proposed change to state law would effectively render our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless - and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.

But there's a lot of productivity created by the Blue Screen of Death Crew, so what's a few votes?

Labels: Brad DeLong, Economists View, Mark Thoma, MSFT, programming, WSJ

by Tom Bozzo

• The good news: tea-leaf readers report that the Apple Store is coming to Madison (via Badger Blues). The bad news: it's coming to the thoroughly miserable West Towne Mall. Apple would have been an excellent anchor for the new retail space at Hilldale — and having it across the street from work wouldn't suck. Nor, from Apple's perspective, would be having the Sundance Cinema and Whole Foods for neighbors.
• Dep't of self-answering questions: in the Wisconsin State Journal blurb (link n/a), Tom Alesia wonders how Sundance will differentiate itself from the Westgate Art Cinema, just a couple miles southwest. He then describes how Sundance a bar (including a rooftop patio in season) and a cafe, plus the Cap Times account notes the stadium seating — none of which Westgate has. Plus, Sundance will be one minute's walk from the Hilldale Great Dane and Son of Restaurant Muramoto. Go figure.
• All good news: the Sundance Cinema won't show commercials before films. Previews are presumably accepted as part of the experience. To Robert Redford: [smooch].
  
• But I'm really thankful that Marcus Theatres has run Westgate as an art cinema, especially when visiting Delaware (where there's a larger and generally as-well-to-do population) and seeing that the only alternative to multiplex fare is a drive to Philadelphia. There can be benefits to relative remoteness, even though it would be nice to be able to hop on a train and be disgorged in midtown Manhattan a couple hours later.
• Back to Apple: one of the recent Microsoft court cases revealed a memo suggesting that Microsoft had used continued development of Office as a (cough) lever with Apple in the pre-iPod, pre-iMac, pre-OS X 90s, when its future was unclear. Among other gems, Mac Office users were seen as guinea pigs for new Windows Office features. Not obviously featured: gratitude to Mac users for nurturing the Office cash cow when Lotus and WordPerfect ruled the DOS world.
• It's worth remembering that Mac Word 5.0a did almost everything its bloated descendents do (real-time spell check being the major innovation worth the CPU cycles) while running well on computers with one thousandth the processing and storage capacities of contemporary systems.
• One reason I haven't been blogging: learning the ropes of the new rules in Civilization IV. (To Mrs. Coulter: it's truly wise to ban Civ while major real-life projects are a-pending.) Civ IV has been just about as addicting as the original Civilization — which also ran well, back in the early '90s, on computers that couldn't display Civ IV's irritating start-up animations. There's no good reason why the Civ IV game engine couldn't run well (with functional graphics) on the iPhone-minus-the-phone that will presumably be the next-generation iPod. But Civ IV's performance on dual-core Intel Macs is middling, and it's performance on late-generation G5s is appalling.
• Maybe computer science departments should have bloatware remediation courses in their curricula.

Labels: Apple, Cinema, computers, Madison, MSFT, Random Bullets

by Ken Houghton

C-Net's e-mail question a few days ago was "Is Microsoft's Live OneCare sufficient virus protection?" They presented a wishy-washy answer, roughly "one program is never enough."

It appears they might have just said only if you want substandard protection:

Microsoft's Live OneCare security software has failed tests which check how well it spots and stops malicious programs designed to attack Windows.

OneCare was the only failure among 17 anti-virus programs tested by the AV Comparatives organisation....

The majority of programs tested, 14, got an advanced pass or better from AV Comparatives; two got a standard rating and OneCare failed.

The corporate response is as encouraging as usual:

" We are looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests."

Translation: We are going to "teach to the test"?

He added that Microsoft was trying to: "determine whether any learnings from these tests can be used to improve our services as part of our ongoing work to continually enhance Windows Live OneCare to ensure the highest level of protection and service that we can provide our customers."

I dunno; I'd guess that being the poorest performer in the group means you have a lot to learn. Either that, or you need to concentrate on your competitive advantages:

A spokesman for BT [British Telecom, I presume] said: "I think we are now supporting it though we did have some issues with it."

In particular, he said, Vista was conflicting with the Norton security software that BT sells with some of its broadband bundles.

"That's now been ironed out," he added. [emphasis mine]

Labels: competitive advantage, MSFT, Vista

by Ken Houghton

Paul the Spud at Shakespeare's Sister notes Sean Hannity and Neil Boortz's latest entry in the "Worse than Al Qaeda" derby.

BOORTZ: Right. Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.

HANNITY: They are.

BOORTZ: Well, they are destroying a generation.

HANNITY: They are ruining our school system.

What Paul doesn't note is that Steve Jobs agrees with them:

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

At various pauses, the audience applauded enthusiastically. [Michael] Dell sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap.

But when he spoke, he Spoke Truth to Power:

Dell responded that unions were created because "the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good.

"So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed."

Dell also blamed problems in public schools on the lack of a competitive job market for principals.

Tell me about it. There's nothing like living in a city with a bloated, capricious Administration that decides teachers shouldn't have a contract and students should suffer for their incompetence to remind you that the contract-negotiating AFT is the sole check on abusive management.

So Dell scores well there. Has he also learned the other reality (via /.)?

The top six requests at Dell's new Customer Service website (number 1 is by a WIDE margin; see link above):

1. Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot
   
2. Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office
   
3. NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION
   
4. linux laptop
   
5. No OS Preloaded
   
6. Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser

Apparently, the power of the "free" market has been tethered for quite a while by the power of the monopoly. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Labels: education, Linux, Monopoly, MSFT, unions

by Ken Houghton

In my deep, disreputable past, I worked as a Stage Manager for a VERY
Off-Broadway Theatre Company. One of the shows we did was an original musical,
where the composer/arranger/pianist was a Shaker Heights native and recent Yale graduate named David Pogue.

Yes, that David Pogue.

Via Slashdot (/.), I see that he has written "[t]he only reference source you'll need to learn Microsofts [sic] Vista."

Good to see the boy making good, but I'm still not "upgrading" to it. At least Phantom Scribbler will have some guide, should she choose that option.

Labels: MSFT, Slashdot, Vista

by Ken Houghton

It appears that, in the new Russia, buying software from a vendor makes you entirely liable if it turns out not to be legal.

The reaction in the Russian educational community is as should have been expected:

Rather than attacking mobsters who peddle pirated copies of Windows directly to companies, the Russian [police] decided to lock up aSepich headmaster who bought hot Windows software which came from Perm region’s Capital Construction Administration.

Microsoft says that the incident has nothing to do with them, but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.

Memo to Mr. Gates. The next time Mikhail Gorbachev asks you to intervene, a response of "don't blame us" probably won't be considered responsive. As we noted in the case of Romania, the pirates of today are the developers of tomorrow. (And, as Emil-Nicolaie noted in comments to that post, MSFT did themselves no long-term good in Romania either.)

UPDATE: The Russian court system does the right thing; it is left as an exercise to the reader whether MSFT should consider the case "trivial."

Labels: Economic Development, education, MSFT, Russia, schools, software piracy

by Ken Houghton

I can't find the reference now, but there was one of those "which developing countries have growing technology-based economies and which don't" surveys about a year ago where the list of "successes" looked very familiar.

In fact, it was pretty much the list of countries known for pirated software as presented in Bruce Sterling's sickly subversive Islands in the Net.

Now (h/t Boing Boing) comes more evidence that first-generation piracy leads to second-generation development:

ROMANIAN PRESIDENT Traian Basescu [said] that his country's IT industry would be nothing if it was not for pirated Windows software.

Basescu said, during a joint news conference with [Bill] Gates, that piracy helped the younger generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania.

It also helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world. He claimed that all this piracy "ten years ago" was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.

The Underground Economy/"black market" tends to be viewed as a bad thing by economists, one suspects because measures of it generally cannot be done accurately or directly, though there has been some recent interesting work in that direction. But the reality is that being able to overcome "barriers to entry" does not just apply to a firm; it is a prerequisite for working in a market, and not being able to work in a market rather clearly means you cannot participate in it.

Follow-up note from the WaPo version of the Reuters article:

Foreign investors say Romania's IT sector is one of most promising industries in the fast-growing economy thanks to high level of technical education in Romania, low wages and the country's thriving underworld of computers hackers.

That seems like a fairly direct utility function; treating the third as part of an error term would be an error in itself.

Labels: Barriers to Entry, Economic Development, Economics, MSFT

by Tom Bozzo

At MacWorld news, Peter Cohen reports that the license for the "Home" editions of Windows Vista forbids its use with virtualization software:

“USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system,” reads the EULA.

What this means is that you can't install a home version of Vista on an Intel-based Mac using the superlative Parallels Desktop for Mac software, but you may do so using Apple's "Boot Camp" dual-boot software. (*) The virtualization-friendly license is part of the $70-$200 upgrade to the "Business" and/or "Ultimate" versions of Vista.

To my admittedly non-legal mind, it's a test to see whether some gullible judge would uphold Microsoft's arrogation of the right to prevent Vista from being installed on a computer by method A (dual-boot) while permitting installation on the exact same hardware by method B (virtualization).

Microsoft's statement is:

Home users have rarely requested virtualization and so it will not be supported in Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium SKUs.

This is true but misleading. For home users, virtualization used to mean using expensive emulation software to run essential Windows applications on non-Wintel PC hardware v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Today's virtualization software is something completely different.

Back in the day, I used SoftWindows (purchased at an educational discount) to play Civilization II on my 100 MHz Power Mac 7500 long before the Mac version of the game came out. The PowerPC chips were pretty hot for the day (1996) and so Civ was more-or-less playable until the display had to scroll because some unit was moved off-screen. At that point, the game slowed down to an extent that it felt like a monkey with an abacus was doing the computations.

In contrast, Parallels only costs $70 (plus the price of the copy of Windows) and works so well that few users thereof — hardcore PC gamers being a notable exception — would ever want a stinkin' PC after seeing a Mac do its stupid computer trick.

Ben Rudolph of Parallels told Cohen that Microsoft may well lose some sales for its efforts:

“To me, this strategy could hold back users who embrace cutting-edge technologies like virtualization, which means they won’t upgrade to Vista. This means that Microsoft has effectively lost an upgrade customer (in the case of Windows PCs) or an entirely new customer (for Mac and Linux users),” writes Rudolph.

Cool as Parallels is, I have it on the MacBook Pro mainly because I work in an otherwise all-PC shop, and we have Windows-only licenses for some job-critical third-party software. My home needs to run Windows are extremely limited, and adding the price of a big LEGO set to that of legally using Windows under OS X via virtualization pretty much ensures that Bill Gates would get nothing out of me.

This is not the only attempted exertion of market power via EULA. At the Toronto Star, Michael Geist writes that Microsoft is attempting to constrain user behavior in some novel ways:

[T]he terms and conditions [of the Windows Vista license] remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

The frightening thing is that there probably are judges out there willing to enforce such terms.


----------------------------------

(*) The other potential target is businesses who would want to run multiple virtual Windows PCs on powerful server computers, though why such businesses would want to save money by running crippled Windows "Home" versions is unclear.

Labels: Economics, MSFT, Unintended Consequences

by Ken Houghton

Those of us who need/want a new computer have probably seen the opportunity to buy a MSFT product that works well pass.

This frequently-revised A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, courtesy of Slashdot and the Toronto Star makes it clear that Mac is going to be the place to be—or at least that MSFT's claim that the Internet will "revolutionise" television doesn't include letting it be all that it can be when hooked up to a Vista-run computer.

Labels: computers, MSFT