Is Microsoft on the Wrong Side of the Tipping Point?
Some things are inevitable. Cars. Radio. Television. PCs. Cell phones. CDs. DVDs. Open source operating systems and applications. Microsoft is OK with the most of those items, but not so OK with the last one. About 25 years ago, Microsoft came from nowhere and eventually knocked IBM out of the its controlling position. Today it's Microsoft that has the controlling position and the open-source movement is itching to watch history repeat itself. And it will.
"Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
—Rick, in Casablanca
Microsoft can use delaying tactics, but it has already lost the war. So, to answer my own question: Yes, Microsoft is on the wrong side of the tipping point.
Remember the late 1980s? That's when CDs were invented. You could add a CD player to a personal computer. It was slow. It was expensive. You didn't have very many titles to select from, but the future was clear. CDs would be used to deliver data to computers. Within a few years, CD players in computers cost $20 instead of $500. Software publishers realized that they could ship their applications on $5 CDs (which eventually dropped in cost to 35 cents) instead of on 15 floppies that each cost $1. If you sell 100,000 copies of something and save $10 worth of production costs on every copy, you've just sent $1,000,000 to the bottom line.
Today you can buy a device that reads and writes CDs and DVDs (all formats) for $50 or less. This week NewEgg sent me an e-mail offering a DVD +/-R burner with Lightscribe capability, 20X burn speed, and a PATA interface for $28. By the way, if you think PATA is an improvement over SATA, it's not. PATA is the new name for technology that was invented in the 1980s. We used to call it IDE.
Trends and Tipping Points
Recently, a friend who lives in California sent me a link to a European Commission webiste. The site said that the transition to open-source software was underway, but that it wouldn't move quickly. That's true as far as it goes.
The changeover will be slow for a while, but the tipping point likely will blind-side Microsoft. The article says that the EU's parliamentary IT department is testing the GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox and other open source applications.
Although these products meet the Parliament's office requirements, British member of parliament James Nicholson says that a fast conversion would raise serious problems in terms of support and guarantees for the IT infrastructure.
The latest version of Ubuntu Linux is astonishingly easy to install and maintain. In two weeks, on May 25th, I'll tell you about Ubuntu Linux version 8.04 ("Hardy Heron") and why Ubuntu is a company that should be making Microsoft very nervous.
Outlook Express to Vista Mail: The Bridge is Out
*I called the application "Vista Mail" because it's a part of Vista. The name is "Microsoft Mail", but that seems to be a name that could easily be confused with applications that run on other versions of the Windows operating system. "Vista Mail", while technically incorrect seemed a better choice on the basis of clarity, but when I provided an advance copy of this report for some acquaintances to review, I was told that "Vista Mail" doesn't exist. If you find my terminology confusing, I apologize. The application I'm discussing is Microsoft Mail under the Microsoft Vista operating system.
Converting an Outlook Express 6 account to a Vista Mail* account should be easy. Should be. If you try it, you'll run into what appears to be an insurmountable problem. It's only an annoyance that can be corrected easily if you know where to look and which chickens to wave in the air while chanting in Old Church Slavonic.
Converting the account requires that you export the account settings, the address book, and the messages from Outlook Express and then import each of those into Mail. As I said, this should be easy. The first two parts are. Let's take it step by step.
I have Outlook Express 6 on the notebook computer when it's running XP instead of Linux, so I set up an account there for this experiment and then added a couple of contacts and generated some inbound and outbound mail.
To start the conversion process, I exported the address book.
I put the address book on the Desktop and later copied it to a thumb drive for the move to a Vista machine.
Next, I put the message folders on the desktop. It would be just as easy to note where the messages are and copy that directory to the thumb drive, but the messages are located several subdirectories deep and I decided that putting them on the Desktop would make it easier to keep track of them.
If you move the messages instead of just making a note of their location, you need to close Outlook Express 6 and open it again to complete the process.
Here are the message files on the desktop along with the account settings and the contacts.
If you've moving from one computer to another, now is the time to copy all of the files to a thumb drive or some other portable device.
If you're keeping the files on the same computer, make sure that they're in a location where both XP/Outlook Express and Vista/Mail can find them.
At this point, you should make sure that all of the files you've copied do not have the READ ONLY flag set. None of mine did, but apparently this can be a problem.
Then right-click Windows Mail and Run as Administrator. You probably wouldn't think to do this, but it's important to the successful completion of the task.
Importing the contacts is easy ...
... just navigate to the appropriate directory and select the file.
Except for this bit of text, nothing will appear to have happened.
Now you want to import the account, another easy step.
Navigate to the location where you've stored the account information and open the file.
Your Outlook Express 6 account will be installed in Mail. Repeat the process if you have more accounts.
Importing messages: This is the step with the bug. Now that you've been lulled into thinking that the process is easy, Microsoft complicates the process.
Start by selecting Import Messages.
You'll want to select Outlook Express 6 messages.
There is no choice possible at this step, so just click OK.
Navigate to the directory where you've stored the files. This is the third time you've done this, so you probably think you have the process down.
Here I've pointed to the location where the files are located. You may notice something odd about the directory name. At first, I didn't.
Look again, a bit more closely. Vista doubles the directory name, which creates a directory name for a directory that does not exist. (Extra points if you noticed that I changed the name of the directory between the previous image and this one. I had done that because I thought there might be a problem with embedded spaces in the directory name.)
The solution is easy. Instead of pointing at the directory and clicking, manually type the directory name in the address box.
This is what it should look like ...
... and now Mail can see the files!
How did this bug make it past alpha testing, much less beta testing?
Importing the messages is now complete ...
... and there they are when I open the mail folder.
Does this seem far harder than it should have been? Vista has been out for more than a year and this bug (Bill Gates once said that Microsoft software doesn't have "bugs") still has not been fixed. Why?
Wanna Buy a DDOS Attack?
I received a message in Russian recently. No big surprise there because a lot of spam goes out in Russian. The ruble, euro, and yen are worth more than the dollar these days. This offer in Russian suggested that I could buy a 1-hour attack for 20 WMZ (WebMoneys). WebMoney is an electronic money and online payment system; transactions are conducted through WebMoney Transfer. WM Transfer Ltd, the owner and administrator of WebMoney Transfer Online Payment System, was founded in 1998 and is a legal corporate entity of Belize, Central America. Originally targeted mainly at Russian clients, it is now used world-wide. The company claims to have more than 4.5 million users. (Source: Wikipedia)
The offer told me that if an hour wasn't enough, I could shut down a competitor for whatever period I wanted.
Konkureniya Shagnula Online is ready to assist me in creaming competitors. And apparently they have botnets standing ready to work for me. They promise to shut down competitors' sites worldwide by using distributed computers. This is a "huge obstacle for admins".
The DDOS folks have "a flexible system of discounts" just for me (I'm such a nice guy!) but the actual price is "determined on an individual basis".
Creeps.
Nerdly News
Faith-Based Science, Anyone?
Lately I've been seeing a lot of spams that promise 70% savings on fuel costs by converting your car to burn water. If you paid attention in high school science class, you already know it's a fraud. But the way some folks want to teach science comes down to "If I believe that this is the way something works, this must be the way something works." So the creeps who explain that water contains 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen per molecule can easily convince the gullible that all you need to do is liberate the hydrogen and then use that as fuel. Only a fool would believe it, but P. T. Barnum said that there's one born every minute. And he may have underestimated the situation.
At the right above is a sample of the spams. A quick look at the website revealed the kind of scientific "logic" used by the Intelligent Design crowd, which is to say no scientific logic at all. Science has rules involving predictable outcomes, evidence, repeatability, and testing. The sites offer videos, speculation, and obfuscation. Not much in the way of science. So I went to Google and searched for burn water instead of gasoline. The link that caught my attention was a paid link for Run You (sic) Car on Water Scam. So I thought there was a good chance that this might be a site that would blow holes in the "science".
Instead, what I found was a site that pretended to compare 3 systems that would run your car on hydrogen liberated from water. And it said the website had been updated that very day.
I knew better, of course. All it takes to show today's date is a little bit of Javascript as shown at the left. So there was lie number 1 before I even started reading the page.
A later page told me that I could save money by ordering today because the special sale would end tomorrow. Similar trick.
Perhaps most distressing was a Google AdWords ad that I spotted later in the day. The company that says it won't be evil accepted money from a company that is selling a product that is totally fraudulent. I use many of Google's services because they are useful, but my respect and trust for Google continue to be eroded.
So Why Won't This Work?
The first and second laws of thermodynamics may not exist in the world of fools, but they do continue to have an effect here in the real world. If you read the description of how this system is supposed to work, you'll see that it depends on your being able to take water, turn it into gas, run the gas through a fuel cell, power your car, and produce emissions that consist of water (which you could then turn into gas, run through a fuel cell, and ....) You may recall from high school physics that any conversion of energy consumes some energy. What these folks describe is a perpetual motion machine.
Yeah, and I can trap a kilowatt of electricity in an extension cord by plugging one end into the other and run my house on it forever, too.
Ignorance can be cured; stupidity is forever. If you're ignorant about science, you have a choice: Learn something about it or remain ignorant. If you learn something, you won't be hoodwinked by the criminals who put forth this kind of nonsense. When you learn, you are no longer ignorant; those who refuse to learn can be described fairly as "stupid". Show them something that looks good, even though it violates the laws of physics, and they line up to hand over their money.
The Science Behind It
If you can run a car on the hydrogen you get by dissociating a water molecule, you could bypass the conversion step and just run the car on electricity. How did electricity get into this discussion? It's because the only way to liberate hydrogen from water is to place electrodes in the water and use electricity. Been there. Done that. The hydrogen in the test tube makes a wonderful noise when you set it alight. But the cost of hydrogen was electricity and the cost of electricity is coal or gas (or occasionally geothermal or hydro). If you're still among the people who believe the electric power industry's assertion that electricity is a "clean" energy source, just keep in mind that most electricity is produced by burning coal.
But to get back to the hydrogen experiment, you can't get more energy out of the hydrogen than it takes to create the hydrogen. You will, in fact, get less. That's physics. That's science.
Science is science.
Faith is faith.
Confusing the two is hazardous to both.
You Always Have Other Options (Yahoo)
Jerry Yang is elated, but many of his stockholders are disgusted. Yahoo "defeated" Microsoft's takeover bid but I wonder if the company snatched destruction instead. Yahoo's fortunes have been fading and most outside analysts felt that the Microsoft takeover bid was good news for Yahoo. There were questions about regulatory approval, particularly from the European Community, but Yahoo stockholders were counting their gains.
Yahoo held out for more than Microsoft was willing to spend, Microsoft withdrew its offer, and Yahoo's share price dropped. This is victory?
Yahoo is now weaker. Possibly seen as "damaged goods". Microsoft may have won the battle without firing a shot. And without spending a dime.
I keep thinking back to the days when Wordperfect was the leader among word processors and when IBM was still king of the hill when it came to computers. Microsoft led IBM and Wordperfect down the OS/2 trail, then suddenly headed for the exits and announced that Windows was the future.
Could that be analogous to what just happened here?
Here's a clue: According to the Associated Press, Yahoo says that Microsoft's last bid ($33 a share) wasn't submitted in writing. That would be odd, particularly when you consider that Microsoft's initial bid of $44.6 billion ($31 per share) was submitted in a letter that contained specific financing terms.
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