Microsoft watchers have two interesting stories to follow this week. First is the new Intellectual Property (IP) licensing scheme. The second is a feverish round speculation (just a rumor) that Microsoft will buy AMD. Both tie into an older story about plans for the next generation Xbox.
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If MS bought AMD, then no more AMD product priority to me. Have to look for other alternative --> Crusoe? PowerPC? VIA?
Let the time decide
If this happened surely Intel would be pretty pissed off, I dunno how much capital they have, but would this push them over the edge into all out war with MS? or would the cooperate and slowly fade away?
"The delay of Longhorn puts their traditional means of boosting income out of immediate reach. The need for new sources of revenue is about to become acute. If they intend to move decisively into the silicon business we can expect that to happen quickly"
Here is my guess: MS will be End Of Lifing prodcuts like 98 and eventually 2000. In turn they will force people for upgrades to the next product level.
Desktops: Server:
98 to 2000 to xp NT to 2000 to 2003
MS has is about to EOL 98 on dec 15 as well as other products. And of course its because of the court case with Sun. They are going to string people along and get every penny and do the stair step upgrade policy. That way they can get every penny for every product that they ever produced.
IMHO.
Microsoft announced their new IP scheme with great fanfare last week. Read a more objective report here. They positioned this new scheme as a fit of generosity. On a side note, this is why MS is so disliked in the industry. They come up with a self-serving gambit, and solemnly tell you its entirely for your benefit. The infuriating thing is that they really believe it. That explains their petulance when these things are criticised.
Fanfare was when dozens of MS guys butterfly costumes ran around Times Square promoting MSN. Fanfare was the huge Sting concert at Times Square (again) to release Windows XP. Fanfare isn't releasing a few press releases and spokesmen talking a little about it.
Anyway, the two specific initiatives they announced were licensing regimes for Clear Type and the FAT file system. The FAT regime requires 25˘ payment to MS per formatted device. To a maximum of $250,000 per company. The main effect of this will be on digital storage devices for things like cameras. $250,000 will not break any manufacturer, and the 25˘ per device can be hidden easily in the price. Microsoft is well within their rights here. They hold patents on FAT and the fees are not excessive. However, hardware manufacturers won't like to pay for what used to be free. And they're not going to like paying Microsoft for using something that became the standard because it was free.
Again, there is very few FAT devices in the embedded market (correct me if I'm wrong) because FAT isn't the most ideal solution for Flash memory devices. Regardless, as you say, it doesn't really matter. 25 cents only matters for those below the poverty line (but then again, they really wouldn't be bothered by software prices).
We all know that Microsoft is desperate for new sources in income. Office and Windows are the only divisions making money.
Actually we don't. Microsoft profits have been increasing by leaps and bounds. What we do know is Microsoft trying to diversify their business. But then again, they are growing from strenght to strenght in this area. Don't be suprised if in a few short years Microsoft embedded section start posting profits.
He reckons by crippling the likes of RedHat and Novell with legal threat, MS may be able to manage the Linux contagion. Things may not be so simple anymore, however. SCO has radicalized the community and make it clear that while fractious, the open source community is no pushover.
Caldera used to be the darling of the open source (or more specifically, Linux) community, with a few rough spots. Then came per-seat licensing, and now, the lawsuit. Microsoft on the other hand was never liked by the open source community except by a fringe irrevelant minority.
An Inquirer story by Arron Rouse notes that with its co-design deal with IBM for the Xbox2 CPU, Microsoft is directly entering the hardware business.
With XBOX they already entered the hardware business. XBOX2 would be the same, regardless of baseless Inquirer story with hardly any reliable sources. Microsoft makes money from the software sales by XBOX. XBOX is just the means to sell new software.
Not to mention the boost for Trusted Computing and content control.
It's amazing how people could make up wild conspiracy theories when nobody outside Microsoft really know in detail what "Trustworthy Computing" is all about.
Not only will Microsoft co-design the CPU, they are partnering with ATI to design a custom graphics chips, and with SIS to design the chip set.
Microsoft got Intel to design a custom processor and chipset for the first XBOX. This time they have more experience in CPU designing. So what? Sony also co-designs the CPUs that went into PS2, does it mean they are going into the CPU business?
For that, MS bought off the shelf OEM components.
Actually, most components, except things like the harddisk and the DVD player, were custom made. Not off-the-shelf.
The disastrous Xbox experience in Japan and Korea may also indicate intrinsic market resistance. Or, may simply indicate the Xbox's older demographic focus doesn't work in those markets. But it can't be ignored.
That wasn't because Microsoft's hardware advantage was significantly lesser than Sony or Nintendo. Both Japan and Korea has far more Japanese and Korean PS and Nintendo games than English users do. for XBOX, other than a few select games, everything's in English. So why pay so much just to play Halo? XBOX has much bigger success in Greater China, simply because there aren't much games in Mandarin for any platform (one word: piracy)
I tend to think AMD would be more trouble than they're worth to Microsoft.
I'm sure most in Microsoft would think the same. It seems AMD haven't mastered the art of profit making in that market, and Microsoft isn't one with bountiful of experience in selling processors. In other words, AMD would only serve as a burden for Microsoft.
Plus, Microsoft has a very close partnership with Intel. In fact, Intel is their longest and strongest partnership. For a big company like Microsoft, I'm sure there would be a lot of office politics that would literally cripple the company if it ever merges with AMD.
A better solution, a solution I think Microsoft would employ, is to strengthen AMD by building closer relationships with it, supporting their initiatives (i.e. optimizing for HyperTransport), etc. It is far less risky that way.
Linux is clearly gaining momentum in the marketplace. In particular Sun's Java Desktop appears poised for some big wins.
I do agree that Linux is going from strenght to strenght in this market, however Sun Java Desktop would probably hurt Sun more than it does with Microsoft. I still don't see how Sun would be making money out of this. Sun should be strengtening their key money making businesses now, instead of ignoring it and going into unchartered waters while competitors like IBM and HP nibble into Sun's turf.
This is likely to become a significant revenue source for Microsoft, and a major cost of doing business for the rest of industry.
Something I doubt. Microsoft is desperate to find new markets to grow into, but not all that desperate to find as much change as possible, especially at the risk of getting booked in court. IBM on the other hand when first started this business as you say, was making losses.
...In particular Sun's Java Desktop appears poised for some big wins
So, Sun throws a JVM in a new unstable distro, calls it a Java Desktop because some marketdroid thought it sounded good, and that's supposed to win what for who?
He reckons by crippling the likes of RedHat and Novell with legal threat, MS may be able to manage the Linux contagion. Things may not be so simple anymore, however. SCO has radicalized the community and make it clear that while fractious, the open source community is no pushover.
Here we go again with zealots claiming that the "open source community" is some mass army of angry nerds that will scare Microsoft into submission. Pretty funny.
Again, there is very few FAT devices in the embedded market (correct me if I'm wrong) because FAT isn't the most ideal solution for Flash memory devices. Regardless, as you say, it doesn't really matter. 25 cents only matters for those below the poverty line (but then again, they really wouldn't be bothered by software prices).
Most keychain USB devices etc. are FAT-formatted. Once prices start coming down further and margins decrease, 25 cents will matter. Also, does a floppy disk count as a "device"? Because if a box of pre-formatted floppies will have a MS tax of $2.50, it will be very noticeable.
On the other hand, maybe this will finally make FAT die a silent death. It's the silliest of filesystems, and it should have died long ago.
As zealots will have to stop using AMD cpus, for their zero-m$ stance
Not AMD... Not the last one standing... please... not her :-(
One to rule them all ???? What the heck is going on?!!!!
Same here for me. No more AMD cpus for me if this happens.
m$ can fund more aggressive CPU cycles, cpy designs, lowe prices, faster transition to finer processes etc.
what if amd/m$ processors deliver 4x the price/performance of intel?
what if amd/m$ processors deliver 4x the price/performance of intel?
Most keychain USB devices etc. are FAT-formatted. Once prices start coming down further and margins decrease, 25 cents will matter. Also, does a floppy disk count as a "device"? Because if a box of pre-formatted floppies will have a MS tax of $2.50, it will be very noticeable.
Hmmm, USB keychains aren't all that important outside the corporate world, and because of their price, don't really sell well nowadays. By time they actually garner widespread adoption, anyone who uses FAT, 25 cents or not, would be laughed out of the market. And as for floppies, they are so irrevelent today that Dell didn't really think it was important enough to be placed on default on their machines.
Again, there is very few FAT devices in the embedded market (correct me if I'm wrong) because FAT isn't the most ideal solution for Flash memory devices. Regardless, as you say, it doesn't really matter. 25 cents only matters for those below the poverty line (but then again, they really wouldn't be bothered by software prices).
Practically every digital camera that uses compact flash, smart media etc. uses FAT.
The fact that MS has a patent of FAT means that all OSs that use FAT possibly use MS patents and MS could then charge for this or force them to remove the code, making these OSs useless for reading any FAT formatted flash cards, pen drives etc. And seeing as MS can only read (as far as I know) FAT formated flash media then companies that manufacture them aren't going to switch.
Linux, BSD and all other hobby OSs without strong financial backing could be locked out of this market on a patent issue an this is a big thing.
[i]Office and Windows are the only divisions making money.[i]
It might be true, but I find it hard to belive.
Anyone has a source to back this up ?
Hmmm, USB keychains aren't all that important outside the corporate world, and because of their price, don't really sell well nowadays.
Says who? At the college where I work every student and member of staff has one.
Microsoft buy AMD, Intel join Apple. OS X v Windows, both running on the PC?
I think Microsoft moving to monetize its patents by enforcing and licensing them could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. The anti-trust implicatons could be huge. I imagine any software house right now realises that at the blink of an eye, Microsoft could turn from an ally to an adversary.
Take the virtual PC technology for example. Now, Microsoft is competing with their former 'valuable' ISVs for their share of the market. How many giants have fallen by the wayside because of this blink of an eye type behaviour. Wordperfect, Lotus etc. The moment Microsoft buys an antivirus firm, e.g. Panda, we will kiss goodbye to the norton and mcafees of this world. These people need to start leveraging their products by releasing for all OSes, and stop rely on a known to be untrustworthy partner.
I think the patent system needs a serious overhaul. A massive class action type suit or lobby to get people to change it is really needed. It is now putting serious restraints on people's imagination. I mean now I cannot even try to think up a new picture compression algorithm without wondering whether some lousy company or person went on and patented some fractal based method which is obvious to anyone who did advanced maths. A cap needs to be put for how much someone can make off something they could have thought about in a minute, and costs nothing to implement. Yes, there needs to be a cost associated with patents, and there has to be a mandatory licensing regime.
My suggestion would be that patents need to be overseen by some company. The patents are licensed to anyone who wants to use them for an amount set by this company, and the patent holder recieves an small amount for this. Patents that do not generate interest in a certain period of time would then be struck off the patent register and available for anyone to use. Also, requiring a detailed patent report with the product may also discourage frivolous patents. Who would want to detail a thousand patents on their product. It is ok for a company to have say five or ten patented features of its software for differentiation purposes, not to gourge competitors.
What a big load of bull.
Rich and powerful as MS may be I doubt they can fork up the billions to buy AMD. Besides .. they've always been closer to Intel, so an Intel collaboration would make far more sense.
Seriously .. AMD's Flash-memory joint venture with Fujitsu(sp?) is rather profitable .. and I doubt neither AMD nor Fujitsu would like to see their profits go to MS.
It's amazing how people could make up wild conspiracy theories when nobody outside Microsoft really know in detail what "Trustworthy Computing" is all about.
Given the human nature (and Microsoft real or perceived records), I would say that the fact that nobody outside Microsoft knows in detail what "Trustworthy Computing" is all about is a good reason to make up wild conspiracy theories!;-)
m$ can fund more aggressive CPU cycles, cpy designs, lowe prices, faster transition to finer processes etc.
what if amd/m$ processors deliver 4x the price/performance of intel?
You can be sure MS delivers 4x the price/performance of intel, at least after a while when they have taken the market!
Please! Not AMD!!
*sigh* I guess I'll just go PPC then.... but still I've been a fan of AMD since the K5. It'll be pretty hard to see her go.
As long as they don't break compatibility with other OSes too much, I guess it won't be too bad..
Office and Windows are the only divisions making money.
It might be true, but I find it hard to belive.
I think MSN and Servers turn profits but they are tiny, everything else is bleeding red ink, especially the X-Box.
>i>Anyone has a source to back this up ?[/i]
Yes, Microsoft
Look for their financial statements.
The fact that MS has a patent of FAT
They don't, thay have a patent (actually 4) on using long file names in FAT. Also IIRC this scheme only applies to consumer stuff, not OSs.
I wonder how Microsoft buying AMD would affect Sun's ability/desire to support AMD's chips. They are, after all, arch-rivals.
What a big load of bull.
Rich and powerful as MS may be I doubt they can fork up the billions to buy AMD. Besides .. they've always been closer to Intel, so an Intel collaboration would make far more sense.
If they're so dedicated to Intel, why are they comissioning IBM to make the next XBox CPU?
Not to mention that Longhorn will run natively on AMD's Opteron, which could very well drive Intel out of the desktop market, seeing as they have no competing product (IA-64, i.e. Itanium, requires emulation to run 32-bit apps, meaning slower performance...certainly doesn't seem to be the future of desktop computing).
Lasse - as requested here is the MS earnings data:
For 3 months ended Sept 30 2003
Windows earned $2.26 billion on revenues of $2.81 billion
Servers earned $370 million on $1.87 billion
Office $1.59 billion on $2.29 million
MSN made $58 million on $491 million (1st ever profit)
Mobile & embedded lost $32 million on $53 million
Business solutions lost $79 million on $128 million
There was a unspecified (in the cnet story) corporate loss of $751 million. These numbers don't add up 100% but they're close enough to illustrate the point.
source:
http://news.com.com/2100-1014-5107364.html
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY04/earn_rel_q1_04.mspx#Cha...
Am I the ONLY one here that sees how easy it would be for MS to turn AMD into a goldmine?
The only reason AMD has a hard time to make money today is because Intel is the de facto CPU standard on the market. Intel, with their 90% market share can do the "innovation" (SSE, Hyperthreading...) and the software companies support the new techs beacuse of Intels marketshare, AMD meanwhile will have a hard time getting support for their techs (3D NOW, anyone?). All it would take for MS to reverse their market roles would be to support AMD: Lets say they make Longhorn AMD64 compatible only, Intel would be forced to license the AMD64 instruction set in order to sell any CPUs! Peoples view of Intel as a market leader and innovator would change and the Intel happy times would be over!
[i]The moment Microsoft buys an antivirus firm, e.g. Panda, we will kiss goodbye to the norton and mcafees of this world.[i]
You must have missed it. They bought GeCAD.
http://advisor.com/doc/12610
Microsoft would have better control if they started their own chip manufacturing. Forget AMD, Microsoft already has the desktop market share. Why don't they just pull an Apple? But instead of going to bed with another chip firm, they could just rely on good old homegrown innovation. (I keep hearing that word every time someone at Microsoft speaks). Innovation in the chip business, innovation in the graphics capabilities, innovation in software. It's all about the dot in .net. These are crazy times, I think Microsoft should take their software business and start to make intelligent devices. The desktop is cool, but there is just so much more most families could do with a Multimedia Xbox2. That and a server in everyones basement, next to the hot water heater and furnace is they future I dream of.
Just curious, what patents do they claim to hold on Linux?and yeah, them either working closely with or taking over any hardware manufacturer makes perfect sense, my guess is that Longhorn has some severe bugs and they need all the insight they can get. why not just have a hand in processor architecture too?
I've never owned an intel processor. I've always had Cyrix (in the early days) and AMD.
If M$ bought AMD, my next computer would be a Mac. Shame, because I really want an Athlon64. This whole thing is just pure speculation though, so we'll see how it goes.
I forgot a line in the MS earnings numbers. The entertainment division lost $275 million on sales of $581 million.
Microsoft would never buy AMD. They stand too much to lose from it. Intel is the standard chip in PCs. If MS did something to sever the relation with Intel, that would mean less support for windows on Intel chips. In this event, Intel may look for alternative operating systems and the most obvious choice would be Linux.
The way MS has developed its monopoly is by creating proprietary file types, direct or indirect, whether in Office, or in Cakewalk. It got to be easier for people to just buy MS and not attempt to read and work on files exclusive to MS. Think how far Linux would leap if it could stop trying to be compatible with MS. But it can't. If MS works its way into chips--this major obstacle to Intel's near monopoly--the result will be sad. God knows what spying MS will attempt.
I'm just about to upgrade to AMD, and Linux. AMD's naming their chip the "XP" was enough elbow rubbing for me; any more and I'm outa here.
You all just dont get it do you. The whole point of an AMD acquisition is for Microsoft to incorporate DRM into the hardware (read CPU) level of a PC.
Are you kidding???
As I already said, MS certainly has the power to make AMD the new market leader and innovator by supporting and optimizing SPECIFICLY for their instruction sets. That means that AMDs "Hyper X" will make Longhorn fly while Intels "Hyper Y" has no effect what so ever. MS will print "optimized for AMD64 Hyper X" on all their software cases too. How long will Intel still be able to commend a higher price for lower tech, slower CPUs then?
And the last resoning is pathetic, do you seriously think Intel would then want to make their CPUs even less competetive vs AMD on Windows (90%+ of the users and corporations run this OS, mind you!), they might as well just shoot themselves right away then! You need to understand that Intel is ALOT more dependent on MS goodwill than MS are on Intel (especially if MS owns AMD!).
Would embedded devices that use Linux and FAT have to pay this?
"The whole point of an AMD acquisition is for Microsoft to incorporate DRM into the
hardware (read CPU) level of a PC."
right on!, but not only that, on HD and optical burner also.
But it don't scare me that much, the computer industry is at a point where all allied party need to expand and they will fight each other to acheive that. The M$ intel long running alliance is comming to an end. Heck i'm sure Intel have is own linux distro ready as a plan B.
Would embedded devices that use Linux and FAT have to pay this?
As far as I know reverse-engineered FS (which linux FAT fs almost certainly is) should be legally ok - but they will perhaps need to loose FAT name. The other thing that might violate the patent is publications a la "inside FAT" - I believe reverse eng. is only tolerated in order "to gain interoperability" a a recent EU law states. The patent holders often sued in such cases, but rarely successfully. If you look around or below your desktop you might find a product or two that is 100% compatible with some patent, yet the original holder could not do a thing about it in the court of law.
Hmm perhaps, but IF they decide to make AMD the new superstar of the CPU market that would mean BIG revenues for AMD (=MS), who are currently not that expensive due to their squeezed market position.(they are about 1/20 of the size and probably nill revenue now). Yes Intel would probably desperatly try to diversify their business outside MS territory (perhaps a big chance for Linux to get some important $$$ investments).
I wonder if such a plot would be legally posible though?
Didn't Microsoft sign a contract with IBM to develop PowerPC 980 (next-gen G5) derived processors for an upcomming XBOX?
Maynard: I think Microsoft moving to monetize its patents by enforcing and licensing them could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. The anti-trust implicatons could be huge.
Actually, as long as Microsoft charges in a non-discriminitory manner (i.e. they don't charge something for 2 cents for Apple, and 300 bucks for Sun), there isn't any antitrust implications. Otherwise a lot of companies making money from patents (no nessecarily software patents) would go under.
Maynard: Take the virtual PC technology for example. Now, Microsoft is competing with their former 'valuable' ISVs for their share of the market. How many giants have fallen by the wayside because of this blink of an eye type behaviour. Wordperfect, Lotus etc.
IIRC, ISVs are independent software vendors. The only other player that remotely competes with Virtual PC is VMware, but unless Virtual PC is ramped up by Microsoft for gawd knows what reasons, don't expect too many VMWare customers to leave. In fact, we don't know what Microsoft is going to do with Virtual PC, but I think it is to make something like Classic, like in Mac OS X. Or Make sure Apple doesn't become a significant threat yet make money from Windows licenses from it. Either way, I don't see how too many ISVs would be hurted.
As for Lotus, what killed them was in inability to move as fast as Excel. How long until they finally made a version for Macintosh *with a user interface*? Plus, Excel was way more cheaper than Lotus 1-2-3, similar to how StarOffice is cheaper than Excel stand-alone. Why do you think StarOffice is going from strength to strength.
WordPerfect has a even more traggic tale. Being purchased by one company to another, it fell more and more into disregard. It was only recently with Corel that anyone could considered switching from Word to WordPerfect, and with the OEM deals, WordPerfect for the first time in years is increasing instead of declining. But why it fell from use? Bad management.
The same goes to Harvard Graphics vs. PowerPoint. Of course, the prior doesn't exist anymore.
Maynard: My suggestion would be that patents need to be overseen by some company.
Heh. It would never work. This isn't like ICANN. What the patent system needs is people from the industry that actually knows what's going on to grant patents to truly innovative inventions, instead to lawyer gibberish in vain attempts to describe a certain invention. This is especially needed for software patents, but it must be leveled on every other kind of patent.
Once that happen, it makes it difficult to gain patents, and people holding patents truly deserve it and deserve to make money from it.
Nicholas Blachford: I think MSN and Servers turn profits but they are tiny, everything else is bleeding red ink, especially the X-Box.
Actually, servers are included under "Windows", and server applications (like ASP.NET) bring in huge profits. MSN doesn't make squat, not anytime soon anyway.
Moochman:Not to mention that Longhorn will run natively on AMD's Opteron, which could very well drive Intel out of the desktop market, seeing as they have no competing product (IA-64, i.e. Itanium, requires emulation to run 32-bit apps, meaning slower performance...certainly doesn't seem to be the future of desktop computing).
1. Windows already runs on Opteron/Athlon-64. Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Longhorn would just run under 64-bit mode, allowing peeps to use more than 8gb of RAM, for example.
2. AMD-64 doesn't use any emulation, however it doesn't mean emulation isn't fast. Intel just recently demostrated how fast emulation is. In addition, Transmeta proved that software emulation of x86 isn't impossible, with efiecieon (It's, like Crusoe, VLIW)
There's no reason why Intel couldn't pull this off. Itanium is going from strenght to strenght. And if it really fails, it shouldn't be too hard to make their own copy of x86-64, right?
The only reason AMD has a hard time to make money today is because Intel is the de facto CPU standard on the market. Intel, with their 90% market share can do the "innovation" (SSE, Hyperthreading...) and the software companies support the new techs beacuse of Intels marketshare
I remember from back then, AMD has around 30% market share. So if Intel has 90%.... sorry, how do you compute that? (AMD is a big time player - This isn't Microsoft vs. Intel, this is Ford vs. GM). Oh, BTW, the only reason why AMD is having a hard time is because everyone knows "Intel Inside". Everyone knew that Pentium 4 came out and when. Hardly anyone outside of Geekland knew about AThlon-64, or even worse Opteron when it came out. Even more, hardly anyone knows the brand AMD, they recognize Intel more than AMD.
For years AMD didn't realize this. Only now. Remember the "AMD Me" ads? That's how they are going to save themselves. Not oh-so-cool tech, but recogniciblity.
Fat has been areound so long, I would assume that their 15 years in nearing, and this revenue will last but a few more years, especialy on FAT16, since that has been around since the late 80's
"On the other hand, maybe this will finally make FAT die a silent death. It's the silliest of filesystems, and it should have died long ago."
Well, like it or not, we have to live with Windows. If I buy a "keychain drive" that does not use FAT, or FAT32, or NTFS, or some other Microfat Invention(R) without making the user do some extra work?
"I remember from back then, AMD has around 30% market share. So if Intel has 90%.... sorry, how do you compute that? (AMD is a big time player - This isn't Microsoft vs. Intel, this is Ford vs. GM). Oh, BTW, the only reason why AMD is having a hard time is because everyone knows "Intel Inside". Everyone knew that Pentium 4 came out and when. Hardly anyone outside of Geekland knew about AThlon-64, or even worse Opteron when it came out. Even more, hardly anyone knows the brand AMD, they recognize Intel more than AMD."
Yes I got the numbers mixed up, but I think AMD has some 25% or so these days, Intel perhaps 70%, anyways my point is still valid; that AMD currently has an uphill battle due to Intels market dominance. But MSs market dominance is even greater so in the end they control the code that these CPUs will run and thus they control the speed and should easily be able to get some $$$ out of AMD should they make them THE CPU to have. Its just easy money for MS....
Say it ain't sooooo!!!
I was looking forward to maybe buy athlon64 or opteron in the not so far future. I might be just speculation right now, but if M$ buys AMD, then no more AMD for me... Sob!
RE:(just a rumor) that Microsoft will buy AMD
oh god, please do not let this happen, amen
Didn't Microsoft sign a contract with IBM to develop PowerPC 980 (next-gen G5) derived processors for an upcomming XBOX?
Microsoft licensed some processor IP from IBM. The announcements never stated what type of IP it was or whether or not it was PPC-derived. Remember that IBM has also developed (or bought companies that developed) x86 processors in the past, and that Microsoft could always license PPC-based IP that would work with an x86-based processor with a little work on MS' part.
Even the current XBox was not completely off-the-shelf products, as the CPU was modified to optimize it for games and the chipset and GPU were designed by MS and nVidia specifically for the XBox (with some leverage of the GeForce 2 as the base for the GPU). It was only after the XBox design was done that nVidia modified the XBox hardware design for desktop PCs (in the form of the nForce chipset and the GeForce 3).
IBM licensed processor technology to MS and it's unknown as of yet what form that will take or where MS will go to actually manufacture the CPUs (hell, maybe they'll actually get ATI to do it). The PPC rumours were simply people reading into the press releases what was not actually there, because PPC is the area in which IBM is most well known, currently, for making CPUs. If MS learned anything from the past, they'll keep most of the CPU design work in-house and outsource the fabrication to whoever can manage it (or several people). It's fairly obvious that they're stuck still paying pretty much the same price on the CPU and GPU in the XBox today that they were 2 years ago, and they would probably like the benefits that Sony is seeing from keeping most of the hardware design in-house.
Your choice of a CPU is not based on its technical merits, but instead on ZERO-m$ idealogic.
So don't claim linux is better, just admit it has little to do with M$, sans the Internet Explorer Core Font pack
I use NO Microsoft products AT ALL. No fonts, no "innovations" of thiers, nothing. Believe it or not, but it IS possible to be completely clean from Microsoft.
Maybe this will drive device vendors to some other standard, like ext2? Of course, MS will die before they allow their OS to read any format they don't own!
I love the technical reason vs emotional reason debate, it makes me laugh.
I mean it is so silly. People are complex creatures. They make decisions based on a number of stimuli. Both technical reasons and emotional reasons are valid when making a decision. No decision we make is based purely on technical or emotional reasons. You can see both in effect in society: Stickers that say things like "made in country X" and "made without child labor" have a strong effect on people’s decisions. As do advertisements like "200 more horsepower than the competition" or "includes a free widget!".
How people weight these different stimuli is an individual thing. In the end they all make a choice that is right for them. Arguing over the fact that someone chooses to weight these factors differently than you is useless. Nobody is wrong they are just different.
Now it's FAT, tomorrow it's .NET. Please please be carefull now. When all our Linux desktop's are driven by a Mono 1.5 (.NET version >1.2 for example) powered Gnome 3.x, it's Microsofts moment to give the final blow.
Please keep in mind that Linux is one of the primary opponents for Microsoft. And they aren't stupid, just like they are very aware of the possibilities their "generous" open frameworks like .NET are giving them.
I hope im mistaken.
Now it's FAT, tomorrow it's .NET. Please please be carefull now. When all our Linux desktop's are driven by a Mono 1.5 (.NET version >1.2 for example) powered Gnome 3.x, it's Microsofts moment to give the final blow.
If Mono follows the ECMA standard and develops extensions that are not following those extensions found in .Net, then MS has no grounds to stop them (unless they could somehow prove that someone used Shared Source code in the Mono implementation).
Not to mention that Longhorn will run natively on AMD's Opteron, which could very well drive Intel out of the desktop market, seeing as they have no competing product (IA-64, i.e. Itanium, requires emulation to run 32-bit apps, meaning slower performance...certainly doesn't seem to be the future of desktop computing).
Intel is developing a completely new architecture while AMD is still trying to extend a technology developed in the 70s... I don't know which technology will be the future of desktop computing once we finish the move to 64-bit (as IBM also have a good one with the PPC) but I'm sure it won't be x86-64.
I love the technical reason vs emotional reason debate, it makes me laugh.
I mean it is so silly. People are complex creatures. They make decisions ....
The thing is that some of them pretend they are basing their choice on technical merits, when in fact it is solely on zero-m$ logic.
zealots won't find a m$ free underware
MS is only buying AMD to kill it as agreed with
Intel.
>Linux, BSD and all other hobby OSs
Hobby Os's? Right so that would make Windows a card game.
Get real Linux and BSD are supported by VERY BIG companies and do things MS would only dream off. This kind off quotes are dumb and you let people instantly know you do not know what your talking about. Added you to my troll / ignore list, good luck with you live..
Microsoft is losing ground, however if they bought AMD, than they would have their hands (ie control) on sales into China, through Solaris and JDS. In other words, AMD is part of the package of some high volume expansion, of other companies (Sun, HP, IBM, etc).
It's all about layers, and the operating system layer is not as profitable looking forward.
That would put a spanking on the "Wintel" verbiage now wouldnt it. I thought That Sun was paternering with AMD. Ahh no matter..as long as theres a Linux build for the Architecture I could care who owns it.
-N
If MS buys AMD they will probably try to make AMD systems only support windows.
I looked at the patents Microsoft lists on its FAT licensing page, and they all seemed to relate to having multiple names for the same files. Does this mean Microsoft doesn't have any patents for the pre-Win95 FAT file system that did not support long file names? In that case, a media manufacturer would only need the formatting license if it wants to preinstall files with long names.
If I remember correctly, there are msdos, pcdos, novelldos, and now.. freedos; Are all DOS come from MS? Didn't it all started with CPM and who owns that?
This is excellent. Thank you. I copied it because it should be repeated.
>>By Exdaix
I use NO Microsoft products AT ALL. No fonts, no "innovations" of thiers, nothing. Believe it or not, but it IS possible to be completely clean from Microsoft.<<