Why the Spelling "Micro$oft"? 12

[Mike555]

Ok, this is really bugging me. Why does everyone refer to Microsoft as Micro$oft? Is this just a trend? Or is it that posters electing to replace the S with $ are steering clear of any potential repercussions possibly caused by posts containing view points critical of the software giant?

Please explain this to me or just tell me that I'm overthinking this one.

--
Mike

 

[medic]

BTW, if it wasn't for Windows OS (preloading of new PCs with it), Micro$oft could have been at the bottom of the software industry today. I remember way back in the mid to late 80's how M$ products perform poorly against the competition. Many believed M$ may have been deliberately leaving software bugs unfixed to force customers to upgrade to the newer versions, thereby generating more sales. M$ started it with their DOS version 4. M$ became notorious for bugs since then. But after these, M$ is clever enough not to put Version Number 1 on the first release of their new products. Instead, they give them higher numbers to give the impression that bugs have been fixed. Yeah, right. marketing ingenuity made Micro$oft rich...not the quality of their products.

 

[Rhys666]

I never understand anyone's issue here.

It doesn't matter what company you talk about, all companies are legally obliged to serve the interests of their shareholders above their customers, legally obliged.

The main objective of all companies operating in a capitalist and commercial environment is to make money, which Microsoft has done very well. Whether we, as customers, like it or not it's the same in many other area's. Newspapers do not exist to bring you the news no matter how hard they tell you that they do, they exist to make money and turn as large a profit as possible, the same for Sky, Fox or CBS, Banks et. al.

In this MS are one of the business success stories of our time, and we should always keep in mind that they're not there to serve us and provide better software and products, that is just a means to the end of making a profit and it could be considered fairly naive to overlook this.

Just my 2p

Rhys
"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation..."

""Vampireware /n/, a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die.

 

[jsteph]

RHYS666,
You forgot one little detail... THE LAW.

If a company murdered (literally) their competition, and then completely dominated the market, would you still say they're "one of the business success stories of our time"?

There are reasons--good reasons--for the antitrust laws. If you don't like them, that's your right but that's a separate issue. So to ignore those laws or call those companies that ignore them "business success stories" shows a disturbing disconnection from reality.
--Jim

 

[Dimandja]

Also, a customer has every right to complain - especially when they are denied alternatives. I know, I know, but the denial does not have to be explicit to work - see antitrust laws.

Which reminds me of my cable company...

 

[Rhys666]

I don't see how you can blame a company for being successful. When MS started, they started at the same level as everyone else, well below your Apple's, IBM's et al.

They're now blamed for making their products more commercially viable, accessible and usable to and by the general public and unwashed masses, than any other single software company managed to for a very long time. The others ignored what people wanted in favour of what was more powerful or expediant. MS built a product for their intended customers not themselves and this is why, in my opinion, they got so successful.

Personally I've never had a problem with IE being integrated into Windows, or Media Player, as I am aware of and am capable of making an informed decision to completely remove or disable them in order to utilise a product I prefer, I don't see why MS should be punished for Real building the biggest piece of bloatware and spyware available at any price, (Real One Player), not succesfully marketting it and then blaming MS for making Media Player a reasonably good piece of kit.

During the growth of MS from it's root's they didn't kill or murder the competetion, the competition didn't pay attention to their customers and the Market and they lost out big time. As far as i can see MS are actively now fulfilling their duty to their shareholders of protecting their investments which is also required by law.

To all purposes it seems to me that Microsoft are now stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea in that they sold so many units, (they have never forcibly installed anything on anyones machine I'm aware of!), they took a ridiculous proportion of market share and are now in a position where whenever they try to add to the functionality of their operating system, someone who was lazy about marketting and their own product a few years ago can now say, 'but that's not fair, because we havn't made ourselves so successful and we can't be bothered to make our products what people are comfortable with why should microsoft be allowed to compete with us'.

Sorry, but I'll never agree that it's Microsoft's fault they now find themselves in the position they're in, people like Oracle, IBM and Apple should take a cold, hard look at their failures of the past and correcting them rather that trying to blame someone else for it.

Rhys
"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation..."

""Vampireware /n/, a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die.

 

[Dimandja]

Actually, Rhys, I do like the way MS products are integrated. I don't like the way MS applies "security" patches - they don't care how many legitimate applications they destroy.

 

[jsteph]

"security" patches - they don't care how many legitimate applications they destroy.

The latest one being XP SP2. Instead of the huge download, they could have made it a textfile that said:

Unplug your Internet Connection.
Thank you for installing Service Pack 2.
If you plug it back in and get hacked, don't blame us--we gave you the fix.


Rhys666
I would agree with you--if you were right. You can go on believing that MS broke no laws, and that Bill Gates actually wrote DOS, but it's not reality.

I know that all that money is indeed intoxicating, and I can't honestly say that if I were an executive at MS faced with the prospect of total dominance of the market by simply crippling some code and strong-arming some distributors (after all, I'm not killing anyone), that I wouldn't have done the same thing.

Heck, I would have--I'd be up there like Steve Ballmer spouting b.s. like "innovation", etc. But that's why we have laws--because we're human and we'd all do that if there were no controls. But we know it's wrong so we agree to put some man-made controls in to discourage the natural tendancy to justify almost anything when intoxicated by greed.
--Jim

 

[GwydionM]

It doesn't matter what company you talk about, all companies are legally obliged to serve the interests of their shareholders above their customers, legally obliged.

I doubt the actual law is quite that strong. Besides, slavery was legal in the British Empire till the 1830s, in the USA until the 1860s. That doesn't mean it was right.

Companies have no ethical right to be unethical, nor to bend the law as it suits them.

------------------
A view from the UK

 

[Thadeus]

Rhys666, while I agree with you, I do hate to see you beat your head against the wall of jealousy that is the MS-haters. You will not be able to win them over to reason no matter the argument. Some people just need to have something to complain about. These are people who have more than once in this thread compared MS (and Bill Gates by implication) to murderers.

When Europe was shaking down the Gates tree a year ago, I was of the opinion that MS should just make it against the EUL to use any MS product in Europe. Then watch them squirm.

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.

 

[sleipnir214]

Rhys666:
If you are actively participating in this site by answering other people's questions, then you likely have the technical savvy to be able to handle the security issues Mi[¢]ro$oft has foisted on the buying public.

But as you say, Mi[¢]ro$oft markets their products to the unwashed masses, who do not have the technical ability to close or workaround the security holes in those products. The SANS Institute, however, finds that currently it will be around 20 minutes before an unpatched system will be probed by a worm and, if vulnerable, infected. This is less time than it takes to download the necessary patches from Mi[¢]ro$oft. Admittedly, Mi[¢]ro$oft is doing better -- but then, when you live at the bottom of a bowl, any direction you go is up.


And if Mi[¢]ro$oft had not been found guilty in multiple courts around the world of violations of law in their efforts to muscle out competition, I would be more sympathetic to your argument that the company got where it is by giving the public what it wants.




Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[Dimandja]

Thadeus, there are many inaccuracies and untruths in your post.

1. You will not be able to win them over to reason no matter the argument.

Why win anyone over? This is an exchange of ideas. Unless you are making MS some sort of church?

2. When Europe was shaking down the Gates tree a year ago, I was of the opinion that MS should just make it against the EUL to use any MS product in Europe. Then watch them squirm.

Wrong. Many country governments have made the use of MS products illegal - see Brazil. In fact, some US gov departments are considering dumping MS. You need to go out more.

 

[jsteph]

Thadeus

Some people just need to have something to complain about

And then there are the little sycophants who spend their time trumpeting the 'virtues' of MS, unwittingly led around like mindless serfs desperately feeding off of someone else's success to make themselves feel better.
--Jim

 

[strongm]

>guilty in multiple courts around the world of violations of law in their efforts to muscle out competition

Some examples (beyond the US antitrust case and the currently-on-hold EU media player tiff)?

 

[sleipnir214]

strongm:
That's not enough?


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[strongm]

It is hardly multiple in the sense you seemed to be trying to imply, and that I suspect that most people would infer.

And in the case of the EU ruling...well, even the US Department of Justice is on record as being against it suggesting - amongst other things - that the ruling would lead to "chilling innovation and competition" (and, perhaps more ludicrously, that it could be the opening shot in a trade war between the US and the EU). And it is on hold, probably for around 7 years, as MS appeal (which they may just win, since the original ruling included an instruction to hand over source code to competitors which, much as some people would like to see Microsoft forced to open up their codebase, would appear to contravene World Trade Organisation regulations on intellectual property

 

[strongm]

>Many country governments have made the use of MS products illegal - see Brazil

Guidelines or (in some cases, such as Brazil) legislation that compells government agencies, and in some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free software unless proprietary software (of which Microsoft products are but one example) is the only feasible option is hardly the same thing as making Microsoft software illegal.

 

[sleipnir214]

strongm:
No, I was using "multiple" in the literal sense of "more than one".

all:
I agree with strongm. The requirement to use (or at least examine the feasability of) non-proprietary software will affect Oracle and IBM, too.

Don't forget that governments are motivated as much by money as anything. In this day and age of inexpensive hardware, a proprietary OS and productivity suite can be a large part of the total price of the system. M[ü]nchen recently awarded a contract for Novell to migrate 14000 workstations to SuSE Linux. I don't know what kind of deal Mi[¢]ro$oft offered the M[ü]nchen city fathers, but if the city can save $100US per workstation, they're not paying $US1.4million in licensing fees alone.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[Rhys666]

I can see the validity of all the arguments here no matter where my opinion lies on MS and how they've built their business, however the simple most effective way to make a company change their products is to buy someone elses, because as soon as profits fall instead of rise then shareholders get twitchy and demand changes. Until their profits fall however, why are they gonna' complain after all they're only in it for the money.

There are choices to Windows out there but I will really never understand all the whining about how bad Windows is when no other Software house can produce a single viable alternative for the general, less than technologically savvy, public. Linux has a good reputation amongst the techie world, but isn't understandable enough by my Mum, who to me is a good benchmarch as she can (and does) regularly use her PC, understands the basics but not when you start talking about below the surface of an operating system.

So really it doesn't appear to matter how bad you may think they are, or how evil ;-) , until another company produces a realistic alternative for the home market they are the best option for most people, and they're going to maintain their market dominance. Unless another company (or Government) manages to sue or fine them into financial problems, it really isn't in their interest to change too much as it isn't in the intersts of their profits or shareholders, and until another company challenges the Windows operating system realistically I can't really blame them for extolling and demonstrating the Capitalist ethic as well as they have - it's the world in which we Westerners live whether we love or loathe it.

Rhys
"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation..."

""Vampireware /n/, a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die.

 

[jsteph]

Rhys666
Something I do agree with--the capitalist ethic. And if everyone were whining simply because one company had produced a better product, then they've got no real reason to whine.

Yet there was competition. Geoworks, OS2, etc, etc. Windows didn't beat these through technical superiority. It beat them through underhanded (illegal) marketing practices that forced the 'unwashed masses' to buy a PC with Windows OR...go through the hassle of uninstalling windows, spending additional money on the other OS, then installing that and going through the technical headaches that come with installing any os--windows or otherwise.

Why would Joe Sixpack want to go through that hassle? He doesn't care if one has bloated, inefficient code built upon a system stolen from Apple. He just wants to buy the thing and fire it up and move on.

Yes, OS2 and some of the other early competition were available on a tiny minority of machines out-of-the-box, but through highly illegal strong-arm practices, MS made certain that the major box makers did not offer any other OS, or they paid $200 per copy instead of $25 per copy, or whatever the going bulk-license rate was. This is simply illegal. It's NOT the box-makers fault for agreeing to this--those tactics are illegal for the exact reason that has caused the current situation--competition has been squashed. Those other OS's aren't there anymore because they had to go belly up because the playing field was illegally tilted.

And due to the ogistics and nature of the market--standardization is key--the Application market will develop towards the OS leader. Every month that one OS illegally gains market share leverages that share even more because as the installed base of one OS grows, it's harder and harder for competition to break into the market--fewer apps are written for the existing competitors, and new apps won't be written for new competition until they gain a foothold, which due to the illegal marketing practices of MS, is unlikely to happen. So the cycle continues.

It's not called 'innovation', it's called 'illegal'.
--Jim