06.05.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft May be Following GM’s Road Map
“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
Summary: Microsoft — like SCO and GM — seems to be going the wrong way and it knows it
THE NEW YORK TIMES has just published this article about investment in lawsuits. It immediately brought to mind SCO, for obvious reasons (see that quote at the top).
Richard W. Fields says he has come up with a win-win financial strategy for the downturn. He is investing in lawsuits.
Richard W. Fields, chief of Juridica Capital Management.
Not in trip-and-fall cases, mind you, but in disputes that are far larger, more costly and potentially more lucrative, often pitting major corporations against each other.
Mr. Fields is chief executive of Juridica Capital Management. which runs a fund that invests in one side of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of any winnings.
According to Heise, “Pamela Jones [...] has told Infoworld that Microsoft will be the next SCO Group.” SCO can be rendered finished almost any day now and following SCO’s footsteps we have General Motors, which declared bankruptcy last week. IDG has just published an article with an eye-catching headline: “Is Microsoft Following GM’s Road Map?” [hat tip: David Gerard]
“Microsoft is having a tough ride as it becomes a debt-saddled entity.”The article itself is almost a praise for Microsoft (well, typical for IDG/IDC, whose major clients include Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]), so it seems like trollish bait. In reality, Microsoft is having a tough ride as it becomes a debt-saddled entity.
“The Mac is still a niche market, not a threat,” quotes DaemonFC from this article. “Linux supporters have yet to unite and battle the Redmond giant. Essentially, Microsoft has one advantage over GM: The competition won’t cause its downfall.”
This is nonsense. Microsoft itself contradicts this argument out in open and in private. Going a few years back into private correspondence, Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s Platform Group Vice President, wrote: “We are not on a path to win against Linux.” Later he wrote that he was “scared” of GNU/Linux and subsequently he added: “LH [Longhorn] is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem.”
“They wanted people to switch to Vista,” says mtnd3w, “and everyone claimed how Vista is so much better… now we have Windows 7.” █
ᶃ Gemini Space
This post is also available in 
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
David Gerard said,
June 5, 2009 at 10:59 am
Yeah. The headline is the real take-home in that article – the article itself is almost completely space-filler
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 11:10 am
It’s a good technique for whitewashing. If many people speak about “Johnny is a crook”, then start an article with that headline and sneakily include PR (explanation as to why Johnny is NOT a crook). This serves when people search the Web.
Got to love “get the facts,” eh?
David Gerard Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Microsoft, like all good public relations, play into the fact that journalists are by and large lazy. If you can write an article without actual thought or effort, you’ll be paid the same as if you put tremendous effort into it. There are exceptions, but they’re examples of the phrase “the exception that proves the rule.”
(even though the phrase originally meant the opposite, but anyway
David Gerard Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
By which I mean there’s no reason to assume more malice on the part of the writer or publication than sheer laziness. That article read like vacuous space-filler.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 11:16 am
The same applies to GM.
Yggdrasil said,
June 5, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I love how you reference a quote from another news article (“Is Microsoft Following GM’s Road Map?” / PCWorld), except you don’t attribute it to the original author, instead you cite DaemonFC, a frequent visitor to your on-line chat room.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
All you ever do is troll this site. Have you something to contribute?
Sabayon User Reply:
June 5th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Comments by “Yggdrasil” as identified by [site:boycottnovell.com Yggdrasil] on Google:
/2009/03/23/microsoft-buys-market-share/
/2009/05/10/gratis-vista-7-is-like-free-tobacco/
/2009/01/22/downadup-disaster-peaks/
/2009/04/21/cipav-and-microsoft-windows/
/2009/03/08/conficker-alive-vista-office-flaws/
/2009/04/09/insecurity-through-obscurity/
/2009/03/25/boycott-boycott-novell-votes/
(add domain name, omitted to avoid spam filter)
Illustrative of what is considered a “troll” here.