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Is the Prime Directive of Every Corporation to Monopolize Its Marketplace?

By on February 19, 2003 in Home Page

The buzz intensifies this week as everyone asks “What happens if Google becomes Big Brother?” and “What if they decide to take over the web?” Must all corporations reach a pinnacle where they betray the loyalty of their customers in pursuit of profit? Is Teoma just next in line? This sounds to me like more of the nonsense of “Is RedHat going to be the next Redmond?”

Answer: Only if we let them. The market can create monopolies, and the market can exercise free choice to prevent them and encourage competition. Think Different. Get a second opinion. Try a different browser. Try a different search engine, a different operating system or a different database management system. Have a Dr. Pepper.

I’m still annoyed about the foundation Microsoft built its evil empire upon.,

By on February 18, 2003 in Home Page

says Dave Farquhar, over at his site. Gee, I think he forgot Stacker. Other than that, he’s got just about every “Why I hate Microsoft” item on the list. Pretty well-written, too. For those of you who haven’t read the history before, this is a pretty good summary of the anti- side of the equation. I was also amused by his footer line, which read “Thank you for supporting standards, freedom, and competition by using a non-Microsoft browser. This site is dedicated to you and others like you.” Why, thanks, Dave.

And, just in case you missed Mark Odell’s comment:

The MSBC Superlist of Anti-Microsoft Web Sites
Microsoft’s Rise to Power
Why I hate Microsoft

Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk
Boycott Microsoft
Reasons to Avoid Microsoft
The Bad Faith of Microsoft
Microsoft Monopoly
He Who Controls the Bootloader

It’s Neither Simple nor Easy.

By on February 14, 2003 in Home Page

The Microsoft buzzwords are “Simple” and “Easy.” I don’t know how they do it, but every member of the sales collective seems to come out with the same phrases at the same time. Maybe it’s just corporate communication, but it feels more like… hivemind *shiver*. “Simple” and “Easy” came out of every sales flack’s mouth last month, over and over.

I’m just trying to read the documentation on Indexing Services. I tried the msdn.microsoft.com site but it’s giving a “Server error 500-013: Too Many Users. Internet Information Server” – nice that they plug their product as they show their inability to scale to enterprise heights.

Fine, I’ll install the Platform SDK on my local machine. No go. An error comes up in Mozilla stating that I have to have IE 5 or later. I do – this is a Win2KPro box with IE 5.5 on it. Ah, but it’s not the *default* browser, perhaps? Since Microsoft is telling us that IE is an integral part of the operating system, couldn’t they have the brains to invoke it directly instead of invoking the default browser they can’t use? Simple? No. Easy? No. Sloppy? Yup.

Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, File Types. Change HTM and HTML files to point to IE. Run the installer. Works fine. Change it back. What a pain. Simple and Easy. Sheesh.

Hey, is that WiFi File Server in your pocket?

By on February 13, 2003 in Home Page

Microsoft devotees speak out. The software giant is gleaning some of its best advice from the 1,300 consultants, dealers and enthusiasts the company honored this week in Redmond, Wash. By Joe Wilcox, Staff Writer, CNET News.com. It will be interesting to hear from bloggers like Robert Scoble later on this week on what they heard from the MVP Summit.

Poor ($40B) Microsoft getting picked on again

By on February 11, 2003 in Home Page

More Legal Pains for Microsoft. An industry lobbying group tries again to put the brakes on the software giant. [The Motley Fool] The best quote: “It must be nice to sit around filing complaints and impeding market processes all day long. CCIA exists for this very reason.” I guess we shouldn’t stand in the way of monopolies doing their bundling. There are no market processes impeding a monopoly, and certainly not one previously found guilty of improper business practices. Honestly!

Visual FoxPro 8.0 Released to Manufacturing

By on February 6, 2003 in Home Page

Visual FoxPro 8.0 Released to Manufacturing. Here’s [bad link removed] the press release from Ken Levy, PM for Visual FoxPro. While it mainly reads like a standard Microsoft press release, no doubt created from boilerplate, there are a few clumsy and heavy-handed phrases where Ken obviously went off script. (psst, Ken: F7 will check spelling and grammar.) Ken’s no english major, so changes in tense and number often slip by.

“Microsoft currently has no plans to create a service pack” is really meant as good news: the message is that this release is *SOLID*, not that we shouldn’t expect support from Microsoft. (VFP developers tend to be a dour lot, always looking for the down side — I think it’s an effect of having been orphaned by various xBase products in the past.) How about “we’re confident that this version can be rolled out into production systems, and are not aware of any ‘showstopper’ bugs which would cause problems. Should those be found, Microsoft will respond promptly.” I dunno, the legal beagles probably wouldn’t let him say that, either.

Overall, this is good news, as VFP 8 really does contain some great updates. It’s certainly better than those products left behind at the 6.x and 7.x version…

Competition and Innovation.

By on February 4, 2003 in Home Page

Microsoft: Open source could harm us. The software giant warns that the success of the open-source movement could hurt its sales, potentially forcing the company to cut prices and sacrifice both revenue and profits. By Ian Fried, Staff Writer [CNET News.com]

Oops.

By on January 27, 2003 in Home Page

Microsoft fails Slammer’s security test. Internal memos show that the software giant hadn’t patched its own network against the Slammer worm, causing many of its services to fail. [CNET News.com]

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