October 2003 Entries
Bob Swann, CFO, says "We need to continue streamlining our operations, however, to compete effectively against technology conglomerates and low-cost overseas providers"
Nice one. Tim Berners-Lee is fighting for a patent office review of the Eolas patent on the EMBED tag.
I finally got so fed up with the noise coming out of my computer I've started to do something about it. After some careful listening and poking around, I figured out that the GeForce4 Ti 4400 graphics card was the worst culprit. The small fan on the card made a nasty loud high pitched whine.
I ordered the Zalman ZM80A-HP from Quiet PC on Sunday night and received it Tuesday morning. It's a massive (480 gram) passive heatsink that completely replaces the original fan. The installation isn't difficult but taking it slow and carefully, it took me about an hour.
The results...
Information about the new application model and services of the Longhorn release of Windows has gone live on MSDN. If you don't work for Microsoft but write code on the Microsoft platform, you really need to read this stuff.
Oh no. How despicable. Flyblogging!
PW Marketing got fined $2 million for sending out spam. Excellent.
Future technology for those with a guilty global conscious...
Microsoft released it's quarterly earnings which were generally great but shares got thrashed because of a $768 million decrease in unearned revenue. It's an indication of enterprises not paying for software subscriptions. There's speculation that this is because there's no big upgrades coming for a couple of years so why pay now? Still, the good news is that PC sales are up, MSN finally made a profit and the cash hoard surpassed $50 billion (think dividend). I'm sure the decline in the US dollar against the Euro must have helped earnings as well. Shame about the stock price.
The Boycott Bush campaign lists the top 30 donors to the Republican Party with global consumer brands. Microsoft is number three with a donation of $2.4 million. The call to boycott these brands is in response to the US rejection of the Kyoto agreement.
Microsoft used to be politically agnostic but the whole Department of Justifice affair certainly taught it that it couldn't be. It's now a politically savvy player and like most corporations, it's busy currying favour on Capitol Hill and donating money to both sides.
Excellent article by George Monbiot about the sweet irony of the flight of jobs to India.
Yep, it's no good just adding features to Word and Excel anymore. The future of Office is as a collaboration and communication platform. Of course, it's no accident that this version of Office will also help drive server sales. I think InfoPath is one of the most interesting products in a long time but version one seems to be missing a lot of customisation ability. It's the one to watch since it could become a new universal front-end to numerous business processes. The new version of Outlook is excellent.
Predictions of a tech upswing in the 5% to 7% range but nothing like the 90's. I found this quote particularly interesting:
"The Stamford, Conn., consulting firm estimates that 25 percent of all technology jobs will be centered in low-cost, developing-world countries such as India by 2008."
Wow. That's a lot of jobs and in only five years.
Check out this Reuters news article. My sympathies to those height-challenged fellower developers out there...
Been PC shopping again and finally noticed that Shuttle is now supporting the Springdale and Canterwood chipsets from Intel. The SB65G2 looks very tempting. Small form factor but with all the power. The million dollar question is "how noisy" but by reputation it's supposed to be very quiet - 50dbA. The feature set is awesome. Also worth looking at the SB75G2 and the SB62G2 but I think the SB65G2 is best pending clarification of whether it really uses the ICH5-R South Bridge to give it SATA RAID. It doesn't seem to be available in the UK just yet.
I've been using this wireless keyboard and mouse for about a month. Generally, it's very good except for one major problem. It's useless for dual boot systems since you can't use it until the OS loads. Dooh!
Revenue at Intel is up sharply this quarter. That's certainly a signal to bring a little hope that the tech sector is getting better. Wonder what the IDC sales forecast of PC sales is like. That's one thing I miss about not working at Microsoft. It's harder to get ahold of stuff like that now.
Been reading about the Tranquil PC. Looks like a really good PC to have in the living room. Nice form factor, lots of connectivity, a decent processor and no fan! It's no game machine but would be great for most things. It's a bit cheaper but not as good looking as a Hush PC.
Interesting company to watch. Been thinking I should buy shares but now they're up by 35% in the last three months. Arrgghh! Always the case isn't it? Revenues expected to exceed one billion US this year. Offshore outsourcing keeps growing...
No surprise is it. Their revenue is hardware based and Linux on Intel is killing them. IBM and HP knew better and diversified with software and services. I think Sun will become more and more a niche player just like Apple.
This is a critical trend to watch. I expect Asian governments to lead the way in broadly adopting Open Source software in their organisations. They're computer savy and are strongly adverse to relying on a computing platform controlled by an American corporation. China will lead the way. Their success will spell big trouble for Microsoft.