Month: May 2007

Microsoft : Realizing A Big Mistake?

Posted by DarkJedi – May 18, 2007

I normally do not make follow-up blog entries, but for once I need one. The response to Microsoft not-so-suddle attack on Linux recently by rattling its patent saber has been massive…

Perhaps Microsoft was unaware of the response their sneak attack would stir up, or they simply hoped to have kept it secret until more companies had been threatened into submission. The response from Sun Microsystems was direct and struck a chord. Microsoft are hurting their own customers and should have taking another path than the way of the courts, like Sun chose a few years back when struggling with innovation like Microsoft is currently. Meanwhile Open Invention Network has claimed to be ready to go after Microsoft with their many patents in a counter-suit, that might very well prove to be very expensive for Microsoft. In the end Microsoft might end up loosing control with large part of Windows’ code, as it is based on the standard foundation of operating systems, of which OIN owns many. At the same time one of the foundations Microsoft is using as a “basis” for their secretive patent threat/attack is the deal signed with Novell last year has been challenged by Novell itself, revealing that it does not accept the claims that Linux is in any way infringing on Microsoft’s IP. Microsoft is now in desperate need of some kind of backup for their claim, if they do not want to end up looking like a failure with no sense of direction or leadership in the market. Unfortunately for Microsoft it has become public that Microsoft tried to persuade a report author to let Microsoft use his report for marketing some kind of illegitimate claim that Linux was indeed infringing on the patents owned by Microsoft. Even worse it must have been when the author rejected Microsoft’s offer, saying that he would not allow them to misuse/lie with his material and then went public with Microsoft’s offer. Linus Thorvalds, the founder of Linux, also claims that Microsoft is merely spreading FUD on Linux, since they still refuse to disclose the actual claims to the public. Their case is looking weaker and weaker by the minute… heading quickly towards a direct embarrassment with incredible speed!

The response then finally came from Microsoft, when an executive quickly went public for saying that naturally Microsoft wouldn’t litigate on their claims… Looks like one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing in that company… Guess what Steve “Throwing Chairs” Ballmer would say to his shareholders now, after his big announcement that Linux is infringing and owes Microsoft a lot of money?!

While this case continues to embarrass Microsoft on front of the whole community and market the problems for their newest operating system, Windows Vista, continues to amass. The sales numbers for Vista has apparently already been reduced by 50% (in spite of all the hype), less than six months after its launch – and at the same time an annual survey among Microsoft’s customers show that they are becoming less and less satisfied with Microsoft and their products each year…

The signs are clear for Microsoft… They are looking desperate and they are loosing support and customers year after year, while Linux continues to march onward! Microsoft doesn’t know how to compete and their actions shows this quite clearly, coming with statement upon statement that continues to say different things. This is not what can be expected by a market leader but more like what you would expect from a company without a vision or momentum. When reduced to threatening your own customers back in line time and time again it is the signs of a company in deep trouble!

Microsoft

Microsoft : The Fall From Grace

Posted by DarkJedi – May 15, 2007

In a time where their biggest product launch in many years has just happened Microsoft is suppose to be quite on top of things. However, things are not well at Microsoft even though their major cash cows: Windows and Office has just been launched in new versions. The newest version of Windows – Vista – is looking like a failure of graet proportions on more than one front for Microsoft. The hype surrounding the launch of Vista is now being questioned every day, like the great hype surrounding Microsoft’s real support intentions on “Games for Windows”. The problems surrounding the “Windows Vista Capable” stickers also ended up being an embarrassing affair for Microsoft, when customers discover that they had been caught between hype and a lie. With Vista Microsoft’s marketing department outdone both themselves and the truth resulting in great marketing deception the real discussion quickly ended up in one question: Was the sales of Vista really good or bad?

When such a question is asked the marketing department quickly readies their hype machine and sets a spin on every sales number they can find. Nobody wants the investors to see the true signs of a weakened Microsoft with reduced earnings in sight. Unfortunately for Microsoft they are the only one knowing about the true sales numbers of Vista. The hardware vendors have already been complaining about the poor sales of Vista, while Microsoft continues to deny everything. Hauppage points to poor sales of Vista, as well. The sales of Vista in China cannot even be categorized as poor, but catastrophic – especially since this is a market Microsoft is betting heavily on! The demand for Vista is waining and has made Dell allow customers to keep ordering Windows XP for their new computers, but Microsoft isn’t about to let this continue – They need to show good Vista sales numbers and they are having real problems doing so!

While Microsoft newest product, Vista, is having take-off troubles, another problem is creeping in everywhere on their domain – Linux… The open source solutions and especially Linux has been slowly gathering steam while Microsoft was busy building Vista. When Vista failed to impress they are leaving themselves vulnerable for a serious amount of time. A new operating system cannot be built overnight and Vista simply doesn’t offer the customers any real new value, compared to Windows XP and Linux. Microsoft has been forced to accept that some of their largest customers are going a way Microsoft has been fearing for some time. Dell has just announced that they will be selling computers with the Ubuntu distribution of Linux pre-installed and has done so with a massive hype surrounding the event. This of course sends repercussions throughout the market and especially on the server side is competition hard for Microsoft with HP, IBM and Dell now offering extremely popular server solution with Linux. Ubuntu, in its newest version, is showing major class and potential and has quickly become a respected alternative to Windows in many areas. Ubuntu is often more easy to maintain, especially with the built-in software package system and high stability.

Open source has always been a major obstacle for Microsoft. In some areas Microsoft uses and embraces the values of open source and in others their fears of the competition leads Microsoft to hate it. This dual feeling is based upon Microsoft being a huge company and different departments act differently. Over the years Microsoft has become more and more frustrated with open source, which has been quite clear in the memos released in the antitrust cases against Microsoft, where Bill Gates thought about using their status as a monopoly to make it impossible for Linux to implement ACPI or to go after free office suites by dragging them through hard patent cases and court after court. Meanwhile, however, Microsoft doesn’t mind urging an anti-trust case against Google, when they become a competitor that doesn’t bend to Microsoft’s will. The problem with Google for Microsoft is that they keep on doing well, no matter what Microsoft attempts. Microsoft on the other hand continues to do poorly in this market and thereby giving Google an indirect boost by showing investors that Google can indeed outdo Microsoft – even though Microsoft is doing all they can to use their monopoly to push their technology out to everyone. In terms of Google another problem is staring Microsoft in the face every day: Google is using a lot of open source and continues to boost the open source movement…

The competition is starting to gather around Linux and while Vista is still suffering from basic errors you would never expect in such a high profile product, like simple file handling and copying problems, and are causing great problems for upgraders. While Microsoft might already be heading for a Vista discounting it has become clear that the Vista sales has been hyped by Microsoft and they are keeping very quiet about Office sales, as well. Total silence from a marketing department is never a good sign for a company… As Windows XP seems to be the operating system of choice currently it will be an important challenge for Microsoft if they choose to focus too much on Vista. Paul Thurrott has already claimed that Microsoft has absolutely no plans of releasing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, as they want people to buy Vista, but this might be the final drop that makes the Linux the new operating system of choice for many businesses. Businesses wants support, stability and systems that do not require them to keep spending millions upon millions on new hardware. Windows XP provides this currently, Linux provides this… Vista, however, does not! For private users the main problem with Vista, apart from the many driver issues and annoying security implementations, is the many DRM schemes filling up the CPU cycles in Vista. Microsoft has always been a main force behind DRM and they have chosen to fill their newest operating system with it, so that they can use that control to sell new DRM schemes to content-providers. The customers did not ask for DRM and it can be a tough task for the marketing department to put a positive spin on the fact that users have lost a lot of control over their own computer.

As Linux continues to get more and more support Microsoft is left behind, not knowing how to handle this competition. The only answer Microsoft has come up with is to true and intimidate Linux and their supporters by claiming that Linux, the kernel, its user interfaces and programs like OpenOffice.org in total is violating 235 patents of Microsofts. However, going with this strategy is dangerous for Microsoft and shows that Microsoft indeed has become desperate. By distributing Novell’s SuSe Linux distribution Microsoft might end up being caught in the GNU Public License Version 3, a move that can end up ensuring Linux from Microsoft in the long run. There is much as stake in this war, which might be the beginning of the end for software patents. There is a good reason Microsoft won’t go public and announce the patents they think have been violated. If they end up in court over this Microsoft might very well end up loosing all together because the patent claims can be invalidated and counter-suits that can end up proving that Windows and Office are in patent violation of open source patents could ensue. Loosing part of the major cash cows: Windows and Office that generate a profit of more than 1,5 million dollars a day is a big risk to take. Furthermore this rattling the patent saber against Fortune companies can end up hurting Microsoft’s own Windows and Office businesses as many of the companies that use Linux also use and sell Windows and Office. Big customers like HP and IBM won’t like that their partner Microsoft is going after their lucrative Linux businesses and might retaliate.

Why has Microsoft then suddenly chosen to go the way of the patent troll? The answer is obvious… Microsoft has reached a stage where they can see the signs clearly and are becoming desperate. They are following the footpaths of RIAA and SCO before them: When you can no longer innovate sue your customers into submission! … Microsoft must really be desperate because just by announcing this unproven claim they have lost a lot of credibility. Not long ago Microsoft claimed to be wanting to integrate Linux into their ecosystem to give benefits to the customers, who had long asked for this. Instead they make a turn in a blink of an eye and comes out with, until proven otherwise, empty threats that might hurt their customers. The Open Source community has apparently done what Microsoft could not – innovate… They have seen that a new business model is gaining momentum: free software, where you pay for service and support… Microsoft, however, still clings to the old way and are not capable of innovating any longer! When you look at Microsoft attempts at patenting it becomes clear that their patents show no innovation and too many of their patents are simply rejected!

Meanwhile Microsoft continues to struggle with Vista. It is now clear that the Windows code was never made maintainable and therefore Microsoft and their customers are still struggling with massive security problems – even on the server side!

All the signs added up leaves a picture of a Microsoft walking wounded, and the recent events at Dell is the clearest sign of this. Naturally Microsoft will be quick to retaliate on Dell for their lack of loyalty, but the change has already been set into motion… Microsoft is being battled on many fronts, not only on Vista and with Linux, but also on their Office suite, where ODF is trying to release Microsoft’s long control over people’s documents through its battle against OOXML. Already Norway and Belgium has declared that ODF will be the mandatory public document format, which is a major defeat for Microsoft. This is another slipping power for Microsoft. When people no longer need the Office suite they will be less bound to Windows as well. Faced suddenly with a choice of upgrading to an expensive and high demanding Vista, with tons of trouble, and paying for a new Office suite as well or choose ODF and have the choice of staying with Windows XP, going Linux, going OpenOffice.org, Going KOffice, going StarOffice …. all in all: Having a choice!

Microsoft is indeed walking wounded. They are starting to use desperate measures that might end up backfiring upon the wounded company. They are under attack from all sides and are themselves helping their competitors gather support by attacking and threatening their own customers. When the innovation no longer exists a company cannot stay at the top and drive the market, unless they keep absolute control of their monopoly. Now, however, people and governments have a choice and the can release themselves from the grip of Microsoft, which will be the first nail in a coffin that will take many years to seal – Microsoft’s fall from grace has begun…

Microsoft

 

Greedy Business ™ – Digital Rights Menacing

Posted by DarkJedi – May 14, 2007

Let me start this post by summering up the conclusion of the recent months: The reign of Digital Rights Management has seen better days…

Since the classic battle for keeping customers in line back in the Napster lawsuit the Greedy Business ™, consisting of major parts of the music, movie and software industry, has been trying more than hard to force DRM down into the consumer’s throat. The music industry back then was faced with a problem they and their expensive analysts could not account for: Their sales were declining… Something had to be wrong – It couldn’t be that their distribution model or their quality has faltered… Only one thing could come to mind in their heads: The consumer must be doing something bad! They started pumping tons and tons of DRM into their productsas they seemed convinced for some reason that this would eliminate piracy or reduce it to a bare minimum… Now ten to fifteen years on and how did the strategy fare?

Well, they are still seing declining sales and after thousands upon thousands of lawsuits against their customers they have also completely lost consumer trust. Even though the numbers are staring them in the face they still cannot see it. DRM has reduced piracy by 0,001 % at best. My guess is that piracy is actually doing much better today than back in the days of Napster. What happened to DRM then? Well, it left the average consumer back in a frustrating situation: He buys the CD or DVDs so he helps the declining sales, but he cannot get his versions to work correct because of DRM and looses interest in the product. Meanwhile the pirated versions provide an option you cannot find the legal market anymore: High quality music without technical hazzle or restrictions on use!

How does for example RIAA, as a glorified member of the Greedy Business ™ react to this situation? They watch the music business’ revenue slump year by year, but see absolutely no result on their work. However, they can still not see the picture – not even after more than ten years! They have not tried to search for a different answer in all that time. Even the most damp of analysts can see that most of their declining sales numbers can be explained by the “Single Effect”, but nevertheless they regard no other option than to sue their customers and place bad products on the shelves for the legal market as the only choice. In most analysts outside the Greedy Business ™ it is clear as broad daylight that the Greedy Business ™ is having dire problems with album sales and cannot find an alternative distribution model to account for this loss. Even though DRM has not even been succeeded in stopping a single pierce of music from reaching illegal distribution channels the Greedy Business ™ still pursues the way of DRM, like there are no alternative.

Another problem arises when you have entire industries, like the Greedy Business ™ represent when talking about the music and movie industry, that cannot fathom the technology and how to harvest its new possibillites. While others were quick to see the potential of the Internet and its amazing use as a distribution channel the Greedy Business ™ first tried to have the entire Internet shut down instead. Instead of understanding and taking advantage of a new technology like Internet Radio the Greedy Business ™ completely messes things up with a radio tax that will utterly destroy the technology and leave behind another vacuum in a place where a possible distribution channel could have been created. Furthermore RIAA goes into the case and suddenly poses as the only authenticated place get money from the collected Internet Tax – even though they do not represent many independent artists that are played on the radio. And who who want to be represented by the company that got the vote as the worst company in USA in 2007? Not exactly what most upcoming musicians think of good publicity for their fans… Like RIAA the MPAA of the Movie Industry is just as slow and complacent about new technologies. The great fears of piracy has let the MPAA to slowly destroy the once great experience of going to the cinema – an experience the movie industry shouldn’t want to loose as the sales of DVDs are set to drop dramatically from now on, as the battle for the next-gen DVD is still very unclear and far from consumers. Every day new technologies appear that can open up new markets, like BitTorrent, but the first thing the Greedy Business ™ does is to try and stop it. The father of BitTorrent has been known to say that he thinks the current DRM technologies are destroying new technology like BitTorrent.

Meanwhile the technology firms continues to come up with newer and more expensive copy-protection schemes, that has one thing in common with all the DRM schemes that has come before it: It will be cracked with days and will not prevent a single pirate from pirating a DVD or CD… Sony’s latest attempt at a DVD DRM scheme proved to be so useless that the DVDs could not even be played on Sony’s own DVD players! Luckily because of their long history with malfunctioning DRM schemes, containing rootkits and other malware, Sony was for once quick to recognize the problem and fix it… The constant reign of trouble that Sony has been causing with their DRM schemes over time has quickly made the company one of the most hated companies on the Internet. The most discussed DRM today is AACS, that was claimed to be impossible to crack, like many other before that. Once again we see history repeat itself. In the same manor in which the DVD protection scheme, CSS, was published all over the Internet like wildfire and made copying a DVD a trivial task for most users, the next-gen DVD formats like Blu-Ray and HD DVD can now be copied thanks to the Internet distribution of an AACS crack code in Hex. The most interesting part of that tale is that it showed how little people wants DRM as a revolt suddenly appeared on the social newssite Digg, when AACS LA tried to remove references to the hex code. It is my guess that this revolt will create an even more polarized world, which is quickly becoming us versus them – and that’s not exactly the kind of publicity and public relations the movie industry should go for, when they are desperately trying to win consumer over to their next-gen DVD replacement in a time where they need the sales to go up, instead of down.

While DRM continues to be made and shipped to unknownly consumers who struggle with it daily another battle is raging in the courts, where the Greedy Business ™ is busy suing their customers. It can be a pretty daunting task to sue your customers when you your understanding of technology and IT is several centuries old, like RIAA’s “expert” witness in one of their court cases. Their methods in court are often comparable of those used by the mafia, and even judges are starting to tire of this misuse of their authority and their methods. The problem of going to court is that even though you spend half of your development budget on lawsuits against your customers you might end up with a court ruling that goes against your wishes, like one the latest court ruling against the DVD consortium where the judge actually approved of DVD copying. The worst part about court rulings is that when you loose a lawsuit you leave yourself open to countersuits. Currently RIAA is having major problems with countersuits and furthermore being accused of copyright misuse at the same time. In the mean time in another court RIAA is being accused by the judge of lying in court. In another attempt to rol in some money for the needy executives of the Greedy Business ™ they have decided to start a propaganda campaign and a massive launch of lawsuits against college student across USA. Luckily some of the Universities doesn’t bend over to this oppression and have instead chosen to counter-sue RIAA for waste of time and ressources on their part. One could only hope that this would prove how ridiculous their claims and logic far too often is. Unfortunately some politicians doesn’t have a single analytic part in their brain and buys this propaganda without questions, calling the Universities “A wretched hive of scum and villany”. One that buys the numbers issued from the RIAA/MPAA without questions certainly doesn’t qualify as intelligent in any way. Especially since it is by now a wellknown fact that the MPAA has been caught lying on numerous occasions. And for the Greedy Business ™ to start this campaign? Well, it sounds like a perfect business plan: To ensure that their current largest market segment is sued into hell… Makes good sense! Just like the business plan is sound when you sue a ten year old girl with a disabled mother or a stroke victim…. The Greedy Business ™ have misled themselves and they have ended up with a completely screwed up image of their customers. It isn’t always a good idea to try and act the hero against the “evil pirates”. Especially if the Greedy Business ™ themselves doesn’t mind pirating from others. The “antipiracy” strategy of RIAA/MPAA of using lawsuit upon lawsuit against their customers are backfiring big time now. The situation has become so tragic that one can only ridicule the Greedy Business ™ for not altering the strategy immediately.

The discussion of DRM is slowly moving into the public spectrum as more and more people are affected daily and with it times are heading for a change. The wind of change can be seen, especially with the latest development on the DRM stage… The closed DRM system employed by Apple in the iPod/iTunes distribution model has been getting scrutinized by the European Union as of late. The European Union and especially Norway and the other Scandinavian countries will no longer accept such vendor lock-in by DRM from Apple.

It is clear to many now that DRM has nothing to do with stopping piracy. The Greedy Business ™ can read numbers as well as I can. It has always been about controlling the market, controlling the consumer. In terms of software we can see how Microsoft has become a market leader and quickly become a master in forcing people to get DRM into their products and then been quick to use this power to control the market afterwards. The concept of DRM and its current appliances has been dealt a hard verdict by the Economist and by now it should be apparent to everyone in the industry that even though they thought DRM could wield the market for them it will never become the new distribution model they hoped for. For too long have the Greedy Business ™ used it to keep control over markets and kept a distribution model alive that should have been replaced more than a decade ago. The Greedy Business ™ found that instead of going with innovation and giving their customers what they asked for, like a normal market player would do in a free market, they chose to misuse the law – and especially the DMCA – and sue their customers into hell in their thousands. Luckily it has been proposed that a FAIR USE act should be applied to the DMCA, which of course meets fierce resistance from the Greedy Business ™ that fear that their army of lawyers, which by now must be around 80% of their workforce, would end up loosing each and every case and in the end become unemployed. In the meantime another problem for the Greedy Business ™ have appeared in the EU, where a proposal is preparing to allow personal copying and filesharing, where there are no profits made. This sort of embrace of technology and progress is the direct opposite of what the Greedy Business ™ wants to do. In their wretched minds they want more DRM and it should be more restrictive, like the AACS, to give them more control over the consumer and the entire market. They do not see the problems that DRM causes, like the fact that the current DRM schemes is killing legal BitTorrent movie download and thereby destroying an emerging market, or the fact more than 75 % of all customer problems are caused by DRM. They only see profits, not customers, which they regard as cattle – nothing more! Attempts have been made to try and explain DRM and the problems that it is causing to executives in the business, but little understanding is met – only profits matter… They have completely failed to realize that what they actually did with their DRM iniatives was to alienate their customers!

There are plenty of bad signs in the industry that they still don’t see what they are doing, but lately something has happened. Major artists are deciding to go the non-DRM way and head for the new dsitribution model, instead of swelling in the past. The MPAA chairman has been out saying that he promises free DVD copying and interoperable DRM. These are good signs in a bad time, but the major light at the end of the tunnel is the result of the pressure EU has put on Apple because of their Vendor Lock-in DRM in iTunes and the fact that EMI is in financial trouble and needs a change in their distribution model. This was the perfect match… A company like Apple with a new and popular distribution channel that has proven its worth and a member of the Greedy Business ™ in dire straits that wants to make profits. They have announced a deal that means that EMI’s music catalog will be available without DRM on iTunes as of this summer. This move towards the end of DRM and higher quality in digital music is seen by many as the way forward and back to the consumers for the Greedy Business ™. There has already been many reactions to the deal between EMI and Apple. There has been speculations that Apple has been taking too much credits for this move, which is essentially EMI’s exclusive decision. However, there is no doubt that this deal is having repercussions throughout the entire market. Amazon is preparing to launch a DRM-free music service to compete with iTunes, Microsoft has suddenly expressed interest in selling DRM-free music… Suddenly the world is turned upside down! One cannot escape the past, however, and Apple and Microsoft has been caught in battle by another company, that are using their own weapons against them. Apple, Microsoft and many others of the DRM-pro team, who has helped the Greedy Business ™ by inventing, implementing and forced DRM into many of their products are suddenly sued for not using DRM, in accordance with the DMCA. I could not come up with a better twist than that – especially since the DRM-pro team has used the DMCA together with the Greedy Business ™ for long to suppress other companies. Most companies will soon see that DRM is heading for the end of its lifetime and alternatives are suddenly examined. With countries like Norway seing that we need modern laws that allows filesharing in a modern society it is only the completely consumer-blind companies like Warner Brothers that firmly stick to DRM these days. Of course Warner Brothers gets ridiculed for this by more modern company leaders, like Robertson of MP3.com. Of course one could ridicule Warner Brothers, but why bother? They are only saying this because they can no longer innovate and find an alternative. One should instead ridicule a company like HBO that wants to change the name of DRM to make it sound more positive! No positive spin will make the consumer see why all their good money is spent on a product that doesn’t work, costs a lot and allows you to do much less than the free one offered by the pirates! The change is coming and only the non-innovating companies like Warner Brothers and HBO will be left behind. Later they will see, like Sony did far too late with MP3, that the consumer still holds the key to profits and they will be in dire straits…

The most interesting part is about to happen… Apple is about to renew all their contract with the content-providers on iTunes. It will be interesting to see how the repercussions of the EMI deal will affect those dealings. My guess is that Warner Brothers will soon find themselves to be rather alone on the matter of keeping DRM alive without non-DRM alternatives on iTunes… Once again Apple is holding all the cards, some dealt to them by EMI and the rest by the amazing performance in terms of sales that iTunes is generating. At this point in time, with no alternative on the new distribution channel, companies like Warner Brothers will be left in the dark without Apple – and in the dark no profits are made …

Statue of Liberty

Return of the DarkJedi

Posted by DarkJedi – May 7, 2007

Hi!

Sorry for not writing on the blog for some time – been busy with Real Life(tm) recently. I will return shortly with a couple of follow up articles on popular subjects. In my real life I am quite busy fixing my apartment a nice shining new office which takes a great deal of my spare time. I am also in deep consideration on which Digital SLR Camera I am about to buy for the upcoming holidays – and the choice is now down to these two contenders: Nikon D40X and Canon EOS 400D. There are plenty of reviews (1, 2) to read on the subject, but the time has come to go down to the store and see them in Real Life(tm) action :)

I will return shortly – stay tuned!

Me - playing cards