[KLUG Advocacy] Interesting . . .

[Adam Williams]

>http://www.pbs.org/cringely/
>"Invincible: How Microsoft and Wal-Mart Can Lose, but 
>Can't Be Beaten"

Wow,  this guy is on the PBS site?  The article seems rife with
conservative/republican axioms.  Not that they are neccesarily wrong,
they are just tossed out in such a, well..., axiomatic way.  Below the
journalistic standards I expect from PBS.  Reads a bit like an InfoWorld
article.

"But at their hearts, each business is successful because it has managed
to reduce its cost per transaction until it is lower than all its
competitors"

Is this the heart of Microsoft's success?  Do they really have a more
efficient cost-per-unit operation than other huge software houses? 
They've grown and scratched more immensely expensive projects over the
years (Bob, Cairo, etc...).  In my mind their success stemmed from there
ability to provide a usable platform on cheap ubiquitous hardware, 
while all their "competition" stumbled about like so many dazed and
confused trolls.

"IBM might compete with Microsoft, for example, and its recent
flirtation with Linux is aimed at exactly that by lowering transaction
costs."

Erm.. no.   I am an IBM customer.  Sure IBM would be happy to shelve
AIX.  But the "flirtation" (~4.x billion dollars at this point) is
because customers said - "Wow!  Apache, Samba, Cyrus, etc... runs great
on that dual x86 box, but not so great on my {AS/400 | S/390 | RS/6000,
zSeries ??? | iSeries }  Hmmm...  What kind of server will I spend my
money on?"  The minute IBM heard this enough times they spun their Linux
attitude around so fast you could hear the corporate tires squeel.

You can have immeasurable low cost-per-unit,  but piss off your
customers and watch out.  IBM bends over back wards NOT to do just
that,  the M$ guy practically moons you on the way out.

"If IBM really intended to compete with Microsoft it would COMPETE WITH
MICROSOFT, which would require exiting the hardware business
completely."

Why?

So they only "pretend compete" now? Hey, we are only talking about those
"pretend" dollars you might spend on either an NT cluster or a main
frame.

This statement is a bit over-arching.

"Both Wal-Mart and Microsoft will eventually founder, probably from
inbreeding and corporate crankiness decades down the road. Until then,
it is their game to lose, and the best way to compete is probably by not
competing at all. Just be what they aren't and where they aren't. And,
like mammals in the age of the dinosaurs, wait for that comet to
strike."

I don't know jack about Wal-mart.  But decades to develop corporate
crankiness?   From someone who has tried negotiating reasonable
licensing Microsoft has already hatched that egg.

And "By dominating shelf space, concentrating on market share, and
making product feints into segments it doesn't really care about,
Microsoft keeps many potential competitors literally off the field" is
illegal, after a certain point.  It certainly is unethical.

The idea that the internet, pda's, etc... came into being like a comet
smashing the earth is baloney.  Smart people saw these things coming,
and Microsoft probably sees things coming I/we don't even know about
(after all, according to the article, they have all the smartest
people).  The only way to compete is to compete;  to establish some
elvish enclave and only play in arenas where you KNOW you can win while
you wait for the world to change is a one way ticket to the ash heap of
history.