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You mentioned today that a resurgence of rich client applications is in the offing. From the average consumer side, we really haven't necessarily seen that. Even when Vista was released, we didn't see applications that really pulled us away from the browser.
Ballmer: I don't think that's true. Would you say that the applications you're seeing are richer and richer? Whether they happen to run in the browser or not, applications are getting richer.
Sure.
Ballmer: That is certainly resurgent, whether it's Ajax or it happens to be Silverlight or Flash, AdobeScript, you know, Windows Presentation Foundation. I think what we see is that there's a lot of technical approaches people are using to do rich user experience. Rich user experience is, let me just say, a big deal in terms of differentiation for Web sites you take a look at. You know, they're mostly rich client applications.
Whether they run in the browser or not, that's sort of a deployment question. I don't even know if you call it a deployment question. Do Flash applications run in the browser? I don't know. Sort of they don't because you have to download Flash. So the deployment is not all browser-based, but I think the interest of developers and users in rich client applications is high. Some of those will be native Windows applications, some of those will be Silverlight or Flash applications, some of those will be Ajax applications, some of those will be terminal services-style rich presentation.
There are a lot of different ways--some of them will be software-style application virtualization approaches. There are all sorts of ways to do the development deployment of various applications. I think simple HTML is a low-level kind of experience.
Maybe I was misunderstanding, then, but do you foresee a resurgence of Windows client applications coming along with?
Ballmer: No, I see Windows applications staying strong. That doesn't mean other applications aren't also strong. Certainly browser-deployed applications, Ajax, Silverlight, many forms are also important. But you know, certainly there are things that people want Windows applications for. People are still moving forward for every high-end kind of design, creation analysis application--those are rich client applications. And yet, a lot more of what people are doing percentage-wise also just involves consumption, reading, consumption of information.
And many of those applications are browser-deployed, not HTML, but they're browser-deployed. Even the Kindle--if you take a look at the Kindle device from Amazon, it's a rich user experience application.
What are you hearing from IT customers these days? Has there been a renewed focus on things that are going to save money, given the economy?
Ballmer: Well, we haven't really seen a shift back to cost. Cost was always important, cost got a little less important during the dot-com bubble. Cost got a little more important right after the dot-com bubble. Cost remains important...People haven't seen enough of this so-called economic downturn that we've really seen it re-emerge as anything other than a very significant issue.
Mostly what we hear about are new applications, how to get new market, new value, unlocking the information in their system so people can use it. It's a pretty consistent dialogue with what has been on people's minds the last three or four years. A lot of focus (is) on driving top-line in the business and taking cost out, not just in IT, but in other places across the cluster.
Has Google at all emerged on the business side of things in your conversations with customers? Or is it more you can just connect the dots of where they're going and know that they will be a player in some of those markets?
Ballmer: I think it's more the latter. They (Google) don't really have much concretely that's valuable to sell. Google's a big player in our business and there's a lot of fascination and interest among our customers in what all the big players are doing, and people kind of try to draw the dots and expect stuff to come, and certainly people are glad to bring up Google Apps anytime we're having a price discussion and we think we have a very good value. But by and large, not a big factor yet.
A couple of years ago you reiterated that IBM was Microsoft's biggest competitor and you said not just on the business side, but overall. If I ask you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?
Ballmer: Open...Linux. I don't want to say open source. Linux, certainly have to go with that. Perhaps Google on that layer, although frankly speaking, most of what we have there is upside. We're small and they're big. (With) most things, we're big and the other guy is small, so we have more to lose than gain. In this case, we have more to gain than to lose with Google.
Would Apple would be on the list?
Ballmer: Apple--yeah, they've done nice work. They're really a competitor in many ways. And then there's other guys, like IBM, that are hard not to put at the top tier. But we have 5-year-old businesses at Microsoft and--you ask the leader of each business, they'd give you a different name.
Right. (Entertainment and Devices division head) Robbie Bach wouldn't say Sony?
Ballmer: Robbie...well, I don't know. I think Robbie would be more likely to say Apple probably than anything. Now if you ask Kevin Johnson (president of Platforms and Services), he'd probably say Google. You ask (Servers and Tools unit head) Bob Muglia, he'd probably say Linux or Oracle, maybe IBM. If you ask Steve Elop (president of Microsoft's Business Division), who replaces Jeff Raikes, I just think he would say Open Office, potentially Google. And certainly Kevin Johnson (might add) Apple and Linux. 
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No questions about X-Box 360 and HD-DVD's demise.
I don't care about Microsoft on the enterprise-side.
They will always be superior.
It's the consumer-side I worry about.
Another little treasure from MS - Exchange 2007 - the programmers who developed it openly admit - they didn't have time to finish the interface - MS's answer - run commands through DOS instead of using a GUI - it's better - yeah - Maybe the next version of Windows will require you to use commands like mem, xcopy, dir and other things that are "better" than using a GUI since MS doesn't think people really like a GUI.
Ballmer is destroying MS and will probably get a several billion dollar severence check when they finally boot him.
I did a multi-user, multi-task, multi-CPU project in 1987 at Intel using FOUR 386 CPUs with custom microcode, which wasn't released to the public until many years later, based on our successful multi-user, multi-task, single-CPU model that sold well using our own iRMX O/S. We ran a special SCO Xenix 386 build on it as well as a special BSD Unix build. It was very successful and patented / copyrighted. I still do remember those 80 hour weeks on that project, which only IBM had on their mainframes on JES 3.
Well, here we are 21 years later. 2 weeks ago Gates said, "we need more horsepower stuff from the chip guys". Now Intel is in essence saying, "hey, wait a minute here, we've been waiting for MSFT to write an O/S for this 21 years ago as we had our own iRMX-x86; if MSFT hadn't gone hell bent on GUI and focused FIRST on a multi-CPU kernel in addition, we would have everything now, including the GUI and multi-everything; XP is simply a PARTITIONED single-user, multi-task, single-CPU system - no matter how many cores are on the CPU itself. There is NO code to address multi-CPUs on a single chip. So WHERE is the multi-CPU code? It ain't there in Vista. Not in any consumer version. How about all those IBM and VAX O/S artchitects you hired? They had multi-task, multi-user, AND multi-CPU designs under their belts. Where are they now?"
Ballmer is fully aware of this. He's got to take MSFT to task, yet keep the shareholders happy, prevent mass exodus of needed talent, and has got to get rid of the 1,500 projects MSFT acquired / adapted / developed that MSFT doesn't need. Those 1,500 projects were buy-outs of other companies, talent, and assets initiated by Bill Gates to get 91% of world share market, even if they didn't fit into the MSFT strategy. Gates extracted a 54 Billion dollar profit from America's middle class, which he now gave away not to Americans, but to countries that don't deserve / need it (some of which did 100% of MSFT piracy). Now America has NO middle class anymore. Who started it all? And who started this DMCA/DRM nonsense?
Let's give credit where credit is due. Ballmer is going to houseclean MSFT good. Just give him the time to do it - the Intel way. It's about time it happened. On Feb 28, 2008, Shrink wrapped Vista packages has undergone huge price drops for the first time in MSFT history. It's about time. Gates thought he was going to make new users pay for his $1.4 billion in EU anti-trust fines. That was built in to the Vista price. Ultimate is just $219 now, instead of $299+. (I still won't buy it). Nothing like this has happened in MSFT history for the public. Ballmer is doing the right thing. He isn't done yet. More is coming - sans Bill Gates.
Once one works for Intel and is exposed to this concept of "constructive confrontation", which is an absolute shock to many at first, I have NEVER forgotten what I learned from it and still use it today, even though I'm employed elsewhere. I've been called on the carpet, and once I explain what it is and how it's used and the results it produces, given time, it's spot-on. Intel wouldn't be where it's at today without it.
Microsoft are now out of touch with what the cutting edge is today.
They are really only about preserving legacy products. Meanwhile we are moving onto Web 2.0 and weblications and services via the Web.
Mobiles also outnumber PCs and PCs are starting to look like those big brick cellphones in the 80s.
I'd say, that like IBM before them, their biggest competition is coming from a world wide desire for Open Systems, something that can only be achieved with standard communication protocols running on all platforms and architectures using standard data formats.
They've had their chance at world domination, but have been far too narrow minded in limiting their desktop and server OS to the one CPU. The very fact that Linux works on multiple CPU architectures right now and has done so for years, puts MS into a minor player position in this important technological arena.
They had another big chance years ago when Bill Gates realized that peer to peer networking was an important feature of office and in reality any group computing work, but instead of going with the robust industry standard of the day, worked out by his own countrymen at DARPA for the Vietnam war, he had to create a closed system with the less than secure SMB protocol.
I think, like IBM before them, it is going to take a complete replacement of their board before they will realise that going against the needs of the whole world is not going to build their market any further than the 90% in their current space they have now achieved, and the costs of maintaining it at 90% will increase to the point that continual release of new sales products with only incremental improvements will only drive customers to look for a more robust and Open Systems solution, as they did to IBM.
Even their current quarterly profit of $14Billion represents only $14 per customer, hardly enough to justify the production and release of free security patches.
If people see and sense that Balmer is no longer focussed on the desktop in his quest to dominate other markets, this will also drive customers to somewhere they can identify with the sort of personal interest Bill Gates used to give them.
What end users need as CEO is not a salesman but another geek type, even if it's all pretense, otherwise Microsoft will go the way of old big blue.
Microsoft has supported multiple CPU's for many years. Windows NT (released 1992) supported multiple CPU's. Windows 2000 workstation supported 2 cpu's. Windows XP supports 2 cpu's. Windows server has always supported more than one cpu. Windows datacenter server software supports 32 cpu's. When did linux start support for multiple cpu's?
"with the less than secure SMB protocol."
Yes, that's what was used in windows NT. Since windows 2000, they have used kerberos authentication, which is an industry standard. SMB's are only kept for backward compatability with operating systems like linux. Samba uses SMB's to interact with windows.
- Cool article on what a Yahoo-Ebay would look like.
- by JCPayne March 28, 2008 6:50 PM PDT
- http://www.evsionlab.com/2007/08/01/speculation-a-yahoo-ebay-merger-makes-sense/
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