Microsoft not taking advantage

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ctrl=A4/Alt=A4/Del=A4=AE?=]

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask all of you about your opinions concerning
Microsoft in regard to their refusal to continue charging for use of
their products.

It doesn't make good business sense for a company, such as Microsoft,
that has a padlocked corner on the computer sales in most all areas of
the world to not continue to charge for their products.

For instance, it would seem perfectly logical for Microsoft to charge
a yearly fee of perhaps $50 - $75 for the privilege to be able to
continue to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Office, etc... It would be a
simple matter to code a time out feature into these products if the
$50 -$75 fee was not paid for a yearly license.

Wouldn't it greatly improve the quality of the above mentioned
products to have this extra revenue generated that could be put back
into product development? Most everyone would be grateful to pay
these fee's in order to feel like they are helping and doing the
lawful thing. The people who did not chose to pay the fee's and found
some type of way around the timeouts would be considered lawbreaker's
and looked down on and ridiculed by the people who pay.

It is really a win-win situation. By making everyone pay more, you
make them think that they are really part of an exclusive club. It
gives the customer's who pay a feeling of superiority over the
non-payers and the criminals. And lastly, but not least importantly,
it generates wonderful windfalls in profit for Microsoft. This in
turn will make all the products they produce even that much better. I
can't really see a bad side of this.

Do any of you feel the same way?

Alt

 

[paulmd]

Do any of you feel the same way?

Not I. Access to bugfixes do not warrent a subscription. MS was going
to try that a while ago. Consumer sentiment against it was so high it
was dropped.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ctrl=A4/Alt=A4/Del=A4=AE?=]

Not I. Access to bugfixes do not warrent a subscription. MS was going
to try that a while ago. Consumer sentiment against it was so high it
was dropped.

Really, I didn't know that it had already been thought over. Maybe
one day it will become a reality. They should have just straightened
that backbone out and put it to the consumers in this way: If you
don't pay a yearly fee you will not be able to use MS products.

I mean, really, what are all of them going to use? Some off-beat
distro of Linux? I think not, they are all just a jumbled up, mixed
up, twisted, mix of wacky personal favorites and features of whoever
happens to compose that particular distro. Not many people even know
how to use Linux at all. So that is not viable for most of the world.

Basically, it is use Microsoft or lag way behind the rest of the world
and lose your business and your home and let your children go hungry.
So, why they do not go ahead with their original idea of charging
yearly fees, I don't know. They certainly should have.

Altimer McDaniel of Clan Donald
Ní h-éibhneas gan Chlainn Domhnaill

 

[Mistoffolees]

Really, I didn't know that it had already been thought over. Maybe one
day it will become a reality. They should have just straightened that
backbone out and put it to the consumers in this way: If you don't pay a
yearly fee you will not be able to use MS products.

I mean, really, what are all of them going to use? Some off-beat distro
of Linux? I think not, they are all just a jumbled up, mixed up,
twisted, mix of wacky personal favorites and features of whoever happens
to compose that particular distro. Not many people even know how to use
Linux at all. So that is not viable for most of the world.

Basically, it is use Microsoft or lag way behind the rest of the world
and lose your business and your home and let your children go hungry.
So, why they do not go ahead with their original idea of charging
yearly fees, I don't know. They certainly should have.

I am sure that there are plenty of people who have opinions
about despots and dictators, benevolent or not. After all,
Bill Gates does donate a portion of his largesse to charity.
And I am sure that there are plenty of people who remember
how Microsoft got to its present position and how it became
the robber baron that it currently is. Interestingly, Bill
Gates never could program or finished Harvard but he did know
how to craft a deal with IBM. And finally, there is the world
and it need not be built according to the whims of one person
or one religion...Bill Gates and Microsoft. Finally, better get
a start learning other computer programs such as Linux or start
paying the annual tribute to Redmond, Washington, USA, that you
write about. Windows may be the only program that is available
for dumbed-down users who don't know any better except to lose
their businesses and homes and children going hungry from all
of its programming errors, flaws, security leaks, ad nauseum.

 

[Mike Williams]

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask all of you about your opinions concerning Microsoft
in regard to their refusal to continue charging for use of their products.

It doesn't make good business sense for a company, such as Microsoft,
that has a padlocked corner on the computer sales in most all areas of
the world to not continue to charge for their products.

For instance, it would seem perfectly logical for Microsoft to charge a
yearly fee of perhaps $50 - $75 for the privilege to be able to continue
to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Office, etc... It would be a simple
matter to code a time out feature into these products if the $50 -$75
fee was not paid for a yearly license.

Microsoft trialled this years ago - with Office XP IIRC, but it didn't
do very well. I believe there are hosted versions of the software
(running in a browser) that work on this model.

Many corporations already work on a similar model, where they pay a
license fee each year that gives them access to a certain range of products.

 

[Alias]

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask all of you about your opinions concerning Microsoft
in regard to their refusal to continue charging for use of their products.

It doesn't make good business sense for a company, such as Microsoft,
that has a padlocked corner on the computer sales in most all areas of
the world to not continue to charge for their products.

For instance, it would seem perfectly logical for Microsoft to charge a
yearly fee of perhaps $50 - $75 for the privilege to be able to continue
to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Office, etc... It would be a simple
matter to code a time out feature into these products if the $50 -$75
fee was not paid for a yearly license.

Wouldn't it greatly improve the quality of the above mentioned products
to have this extra revenue generated that could be put back into product
development? Most everyone would be grateful to pay these fee's in
order to feel like they are helping and doing the lawful thing. The
people who did not chose to pay the fee's and found some type of way
around the timeouts would be considered lawbreaker's and looked down on
and ridiculed by the people who pay.

It is really a win-win situation. By making everyone pay more, you make
them think that they are really part of an exclusive club. It gives the
customer's who pay a feeling of superiority over the non-payers and the
criminals. And lastly, but not least importantly, it generates wonderful
windfalls in profit for Microsoft. This in turn will make all the
products they produce even that much better. I can't really see a bad
side of this.

Are you blind?

Do any of you feel the same way?

Alt

Oh, Windows/Office only for the rich, eh? I think MS should lower their
prices and allow up to three installations of Windows/Office per household.

Alias

 

[antioch]

Is it April 1st??????
This cannot be real - its a wind-up!
Antioch

 

[Alias]

Is it April 1st??????
This cannot be real - its a wind-up!
Antioch

Maybe the OP is bucking for an MVP award.

Alias

 

[antioch]

Maybe the OP is bucking for an MVP award.

Alias

You may be right, because he did this post as well;


But you didn't reply to that post as far as I recall.
Someone suggested it was B.G.
Antioch

 

[Bob I]

It would appear you haven't been around the PC business very long. This
has been tried in several methods and been rejected by the buying public.

 

[Gordon]

It would appear you haven't been around the PC business very long.

If you go to the Linux Advocacy group you'll realise he hasn't been around
ANYTHING very long!

 

[kurttrail]

Ctrl¤/Alt¤/Del¤®" <""Alt-Ctrl-Del\"@________------------{{{{ }}}}.net
wrote:

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask all of you about your opinions concerning
Microsoft in regard to their refusal to continue charging for use of
their products.

It doesn't make good business sense for a company, such as Microsoft,
that has a padlocked corner on the computer sales in most all areas of
the world to not continue to charge for their products.

For instance, it would seem perfectly logical for Microsoft to charge
a yearly fee of perhaps $50 - $75 for the privilege to be able to
continue to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Office, etc... It would be a
simple matter to code a time out feature into these products if the
$50 -$75 fee was not paid for a yearly license.

Wouldn't it greatly improve the quality of the above mentioned
products to have this extra revenue generated that could be put back
into product development? Most everyone would be grateful to pay
these fee's in order to feel like they are helping and doing the
lawful thing. The people who did not chose to pay the fee's and found
some type of way around the timeouts would be considered lawbreaker's
and looked down on and ridiculed by the people who pay.

It is really a win-win situation. By making everyone pay more, you
make them think that they are really part of an exclusive club. It
gives the customer's who pay a feeling of superiority over the
non-payers and the criminals. And lastly, but not least importantly,
it generates wonderful windfalls in profit for Microsoft. This in
turn will make all the products they produce even that much better. I
can't really see a bad side of this.

Do any of you feel the same way?

Alt

Give me a "T"

T

Give me a "R"

R

Give me an "O"

O

Give me a "L"

L

Give me another "L"

L

What does it spell?

What the OP is.

--
Peace!
Kurt Kirsch
Self-anointed Moderator
http://microscum.com
"It'll soon shake your Windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."

 

[Bob I]

Ah! He be one of those types!

Bob I wrote:




If you go to the Linux Advocacy group you'll realise he hasn't been around
ANYTHING very long!

 

[Jon]

Ctrl¤/Alt¤/Del¤®" <""Alt-Ctrl-Del\"@________------------{{{{ }}}}.net
wrote:


Give me a "T"

T

Give me a "R"

R

Give me an "O"

O

Give me a "L"

L

Give me another "L"

L

What does it spell?

What the OP is.

--
Peace!
Kurt Kirsch
Self-anointed Moderator
http://microscum.com
"It'll soon shake your Windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."

Toilet roll ?

Jon

 

[mamamia]

Maybe the OP is bucking for an MVP award.

Alias

<snip>

I dunno, seems like a bit of a nut tho. He made this post in another
group recently about the benefits of trolls on usenet.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Tue, 16 May 2006 20:56:01 -0500, Ctrl¤/Alt¤/Del¤®

For instance, it would seem perfectly logical for Microsoft to charge
a yearly fee of perhaps $50 - $75 for the privilege to be able to
continue to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Office, etc...

Nonsense, given the current model is "this OS is just as much a
permanent component as your RAM or hard drive, and must be purchased
as such". That is the model we've been forced to swallow, as opposed
to "an extra copy of software is just a bunch of free bytes, why pay
for each copy?". Swallow it we did, and with that comes obligations
to fix built-in defects for free.

It would be a simple matter to code a time out feature into these
products if the $50 -$75 fee was not paid for a yearly license.

It would be a simple matter to press the Big Red Button and nuke
Moscow, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.

At present, we expect and get permanent use of the software licenses
we buy. If MS wants to sell us a new OS or Office (so the theory
goes), then they must create compelling value in the new version to
make it worth the upgrade. If they fail to do that, we have the right
to continue using what we have already paid for.

Wouldn't it greatly improve the quality of the above mentioned
products to have this extra revenue generated

Nope. If MS is going to get paid every year, irrespective of whetrher
they create appreciable new value or not, then there's no impetus to
improve the product. MS would become a form of "civil service",
effectively living on tax on using our systems.

It's what is referred to as "rental slavery"... you don't pay your HD
vendor every year you use the PC, so why should MS get that?

Most everyone would be grateful to pay these fee's in order to
feel like they are helping and doing the lawful thing.

Nope. If I buy a 10 year old PC, I expect to be able to use it until
it falls apart, without paying MS anything at all unless I choose to
upgrade the software on it and they have something I can use.

In your model of "rental slavery", I'd have to swallow their
"upgrades" whether I like it or not, and keep paying indefinitely,
even if the new form of the OS is so bloated that I have to throw my
old PC away (and hello, MS's hardware "business partners").

It is really a win-win situation.

Nope, it's a rip-off. If a software vendor is unable to produce a
defect-free product, they should not be able to surf that value
failure to force a "golden handcuffs" revenue stream.

Do any of you feel the same way?

Some might; this one doesn't.

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

The rights you save may be your own

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

Really, I didn't know that it had already been thought over.

During the course of the DoJ case against MS's leveraging of OS
monopoly to push IE's dominance as a web browser, various private
email and other documentation was laid bare for public scrutiny - an
adverse effect for MS that could rival the trial's outcome in terms of
impact, and that MS had to suffer irrespective of the judgement. If
you think that's an unfair inducement to litigation, I agree with you.

One of the things that came out of those docs was plans for "rental
slavery", and yes, the public didn't like it at all. There are
contexts where the subscription model makes sense, and MS has extended
it as a parallel offer or as a replacement regimen.

There is one class of software that moved to the subscription model a
while ago, and no-one contests the appropriateness of this; antivirus
tools, which by the nature of what they do have to be re-invented on a
continuous basis that cannot be planned by the vendor, but is forced
by the malware environment.

This should not be the case with general OS and application software.

Analogy: You subscribe to gasoline supply, but you don't subscribe to
your car vendor. Peterol can be expected to burn and thus needs to be
replaced; a car is expected to contain that burning and not need to be
replaced because "hey, this petrol keeps setting the car alight".

Maybe one day it will become a reality. They should have just
straightened that backbone out and put it to the consumers in
this way: If you don't pay a yearly fee you will not be able to
use MS products.

Analogy: You buy a house, and if you feel the need for a different
house, you sell your old house and buy a new one.

Suddenly, you are told by the building trade that because it is "so
difficult" to stop roof leaks, walls collapsing, etc. (i.e. the
fundamental process of building a house) that you can't buy houses
anymore; from now on, you have to rent and pay annual maintenance.

Next, you're told that old houses constitute a health hazard because
they leak, walls fall down and crush kids, etc. so all houses that
were sold outright to their owners will now be demolished. Ex-owners
are cordially invited to rent, pay maintenance, etc.

The first question you should ask yourself is; why is there a need for
this constant house maintenance? Is it because the original house
building was defective, and if so, should that incompetence be
rewarded by paying the builders annually irrespective of the quality
of their work? If houses leak and fall down because of impractical
architecture (say, building houses on 100-foot wooden stilts, using
damp paper for a one-big-sunroof design, etc.) then is it not a better
answer to design within the limitations of your materials?


Now you may say the above analogy is inaccurate, and I'd agree with
you. Focus on why, and those answers will tell their own story...

The building trade doesn't have the lock-in to prevent you from using
other builders who can build houses that are compatible with
water/electricity supply, furniture, waste removal etc.

Basically, it is use Microsoft or lag way behind the rest of the world
and lose your business and your home and let your children go hungry.
So, why they do not go ahead with their original idea of charging
yearly fees, I don't know. They certainly should have.

Because the world would rise up and either crush them, or render them
irrelevant. The practice of paying again and again for the same
"intellectual property" rests on good faith; if that good faith is
destroyed to a degree that impacts on concerns of national
sovereignty, then you may find your gloabl jurisdiction shrinks...
would you risk World War III just to collect MS's bad debt? Or do you
think other countries will accept "use Microsoft or lag way behind the
rest of the world and let your children go hungry"?

IBM tried the same sort of BS in the early days of the PC, when there
were "IBM PCs" and "clones". The PC was successful because it broke
the chains of proprietary lock-in, so that even though better computer
designs were around, they were the ones left behind.

IBM decided to unilaterally re-invent the PC, but this time they'd
maintain ownership of the design so that "clone" vendors would have to
pay hefty royalties. They designed with what their limited and
sphincteric imagination considered a "better" PC, the PS/2; new MCA
card bus incompatible with ISA cards, new PS/2 keyboard and mouse
connections, new oddball post-VGA (but sub-SVGA) graphics, new OS/2
OS, new "vastly bigger" 2.88M diskettes, and OS/2 instead of DOS.

The "clones" responded by taking the original PC design forward, and
past the meagre improvements IBM were punting - an EISA bus that could
still use old ISA cards, etc. Within a few years freed from IBM's
shackles, we had VL-bus that blew away MCA for speed and 100M or 120M
Zip or LS120 disks that blew away 2.88M. After a longer while, we had
the PCI as a real foundation for growth, and we haven't looked back
since... and by now, IBM no longer make PCs at all.

The lesson: Progress isn't about how good the original design is, it
is about the volume of resources that are geared to its development.

Create an environment that redirects OS and application software
development towards Linux at the expense of Windows, and you will see
the same outcome. MS have to serve their shareholders, but the nature
of that shareholding is no longer quick grow-and-sell, and they won't
be well-served by a morally-repugnant over-reach that kills the goose.

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

"We have captured lightning and used
it to teach sand how to think."

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Wed, 17 May 2006 00:20:12 -0700, Mistoffolees

And I am sure that there are plenty of people who remember
how Microsoft got to its present position

By breaking the stranglehold of "big iron" and opening up application
software availability to generic computers. The latter is something
that Apple still lacks the courage or decency to do.

and how it became the robber baron that it currently is.

By being buffered against the immediate consequences of market anger,
they were able to pull moves that consolidated their position and
extend into new markets. Those tactics are successful, but they only
work if you have already earned your success in other ways; in other
words, they are decadence rather than good ways forward.

Interestingly, Bill Gates never could program

False, I suspect. I remember reading an article that looked at the
original DOS code, including that done by Bill Gates, and commenting
on how efficient and well-coded it was.

By now, it's as impossible to know anything about "Bill Gates" as it
is about, say, Michael Jackson or George Bush. There are far too many
salaried layers betwen them and the observer, but we do know he
started out as a coder and geek, in the same sense that I am a geek; a
fascination and love of the technology for its own sake.

By now, neither of us are pure geeks, but that's where we're from

I often wonder if Bill still codes, and if he misses it if not.

or finished Harvard

Well, would you finish training to be the world's nth lawyer if
something you really believed in and loved doing took off to make a
fortune but to demand all your time?

Windows may be the only program

that is available for dumbed-down users

There's what the user wants to do, and there's what has to happen to
make it so. The value of software is to bridge the two.

Software that barely lifts you above the system (e.g. "you don't have
to write a device driver to use your new HD, just add this command
string when re-compiling the OS") is less useful or valuable than
software that abstracts the task right up to your intention ("new HD
detected, do you want to use it?").

The trouble often is that Windows goes too far, i.e. it second-guesses
your intention rather than facilitating its execution ("Windows found
a new hard drive and is already writing to it").

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

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