Joe, it looks as though you too must be viewing the VCSY settlement as a non-event. You were one of the few who wrote an article on the settlement when it happened and I'm sure that one day your readers will understand better and they will understand why there were many of posters impersonating me and trying to confuse them about the importance of VCSY. However, there was no press release from VCSY or Microsoft about the "CONFIDENTIAL" settlement agreement which Microsoft settled the day before the Markman Hearing and just 15 months after the infringement lawsuit was announced, very uncharacteristic of Microsoft wouldn't you say?

If Microsoft went in front of the Judge at the Markman Hearing, Microsoft would have most likely had injunctions put on all of their .Net FrameWork products and all of their Sharepoint products as well as possibly been found guilty of inducing infringement on approximately 6,000 partners. Does that sound like it should be a "non-event" or does it sound more like VCSY and Microsoft are hiding something BIG?

So Microsoft settles with VCSY on July 25th and BANG the Yahoo deal is dead, suddenly Microsoft has no desire to pursue Yahoo as they were so desperately trying to do and still nobody cares to make the connection.

(You write in August)
"The annual Microsoft Financial Analysts Meeting opens with Steve Ballmer claiming the company's future is the server cloud."

So days after Microsoft settles with VCSY we see Ballmer fumbling his way through an interview about Cloud Computing, which he obviously knew very little about.

Verizon sure knows that VCSY/Now Solutions has the goods for Cloud Computing
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-16-2007/0004506332&EDATE=

You know me, I could go on for days telling you about the conspiracy against VCSY, but today I'll spare you that. lol

December (or before):

On the consumer side, Vista-64 Preinstalled is the new standard.

As one example, on the HP model that I ordered on HP.com, Vista-32 was removed as an option.

Listen folks;

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@I-Man,
What's up with this VSCY nonsense? You've got a bee up your butt about it? It's no more or less than Steve Ballmer taking a nap, or Bill Gates buying a car.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about your up-to-date link from January 2007. What other up-to-date news items do you have for us? The fall of the Roman Empire? The Battle of Hastings? The invention of fire, perhaps? Tell us, please, who is going to win the 1952 World Series? We await your genius insights! We love your ancient news re-hashed and served again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

And since we've heard nothing at all about what went on behind closed doors, the most logical assumption is that Microsoft paid hundreds of millions of dollars to VCSY, no? Hey, maybe your are right! The last time I lost my keys, I thought that they had fallen behind the couch. Foolish me! Since I heard nothing from them, the ONLY logical conclusion is that they were paid 500 million dollars by Microsoft to stay hidden. YES! Now that you have enlightened me, I can suddenly see so very clearly!!! Now the trick will be to find out where my keys have hidden all that money that Microsoft paid them. Will you help me? Send me $13 million as a act of faith, and I will split the $500 million with you 50-50... just as soon as I find it.

Joe Wilcox says:

"Sure, Apple made gains in Mac market share and the iPhone 3G is wooing away developers. Google released a Web browser and mobile operating system, while gaining more search share.
But these nuisances aside, and despite sluggish enterprise Windows Vista adoption, Microsoft stormed the server and data center and continued to post strong quarterly earnings"
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Glad you can see the silver lining here for M$ threw the Dark Clouds Joe. Have you ever thought about getting an PR job for politicians?

While I agree with you that M$ earnings were up this year, they did it by squeezing more out of an ever shrinking pie of users. From the high point of about 3 years ago to now, M$ has managed to lose almost 6% of the desktop OS market, and this is a little nuisance? Sounds like big bucks mostly to Apple to me Joe.

Perhaps the exodus to Mac is beginning to subside, after all, Mac's are not cheap, and there I agree with most of the MS shills. Unless Apple reduces the price, Mac desktop percentage may start to flatline soon.

So here's my question for you Joe, if M$ income is so rosey, how come the stock is doing so bad? Could it be that smart investors know that Linux is free, and M$ is charging too much for Windows and Office? And therefore will have to, like M$ already has with XP for Netbooks, reduce the price of its software? It is a commody after all. Not only that, but Windows is not very good, but rather just a big malware target, Isn't this why you Joe, use Mac OS X?

Joe, am I such a problem for the bottom line of advertising dollars of Ziff-Davis that my posts are blocked now? And there was no links in my post either.

Joe it will not do you any good to block my ip address, as you know I am not the one doing the impersonations. Either someone is inept at your organization, or I have asked too many questions that you cannot or will not answer.

@ InquiringMind:

based on the penny stock's latest Q filing, the event WAS a non-event for MSFT. a paltry $2.9 million is all that changed hands & no disclosure of any further monies to come.

It took the attorneys longer to draft the settlement than it did for MSFT to earn the money to pay it (25 minutes by Al's calculation is all MSFT needed).

So much for the "billions" or "hundreds of millions", eh?

Much of the good news here is bad news for consumers. The price asked for M$'s software keeps rising. The clueless/locked-in continue to pay but that will not work in the emerging markets: netbooks where the price of the licence cannot hide and the BRIC countries where price is very important. M$'s client income was pretty slow because people are not buying the high-end stuff, particularly for netbooks which are hot. Subsequent years will be much less interesting for M$. The number of users of GNU/Linux nearly doubled in 2008 thanks to OEMs starting to push, the netbooks and the rapid-boot-to-browser motherboards. So, while M$ has modest growth in units sold, OEMs will pump out GNU/Linux boxes as fast as they can.

Look at ACER, for example. They moved up because they pushed netbooks. Dell and HP will have to work hard to compete and they will not wait for M$'s vapour-ware.

Just a few of my ideas on 2008/2009
@Robert
"The clueless/locked-in continue to pay but that will not work in the emerging markets: netbooks where the price of the licence cannot hide and the BRIC countries where price is very important. M$'s client income was pretty slow because people are not buying the high-end stuff, particularly for netbooks which are hot."
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Completely agree, with a proprietary platform costing to develop, that cost needs to be passed somewhere, in the case of Netbooks, which IMO are sold on the fact that they are cheap and functional, it tends to push up the price. Couple that with the high spec requires of some proprietary platforms, and instead of a cheap functional netbook, you have an expensive machine with performance issues.
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The only hurdle for alternatives now, is getting past peoples opinion that Linux is an experts only platform.
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Quote Robert "The number of users of GNU/Linux nearly doubled in 2008 thanks to OEMs starting to push, the netbooks and the rapid-boot-to-browser motherboards. So, while M$ has modest growth in units sold, OEMs will pump out GNU/Linux boxes as fast as they can."
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I think also technology awareness played a part. We have a generation of new computer users who are probably more "savvy" than the majority of us when we were at that age. Unlike what some proprietary companies think, learning a new system can be very rewarding, and for a new generation something which they will have no problems doing. Mainstream exposure also helps. Here in the UK, the BBC is not deploying silverlight and is instead working with Canonical to provide video to its viewers, another example of people switching away from "household name" firms and seeking an alternative.
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A quick look at the traditional computer magazines here in the UK, have titles such as "drop windows" on the cover (with a Linux distro on disk) Magazines where you would traditionaly find only a few paragraphs per issue on Linux topics now have entire sections dedicated to Linux and open source.
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I believe that the open source platform has rekindled peoples computer passion, something which IMO died out after the days of the Amiga. People seem today to take a genuine interest in learning something new, saving money and contributing to a community, all which are found in the world of open source.
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Companies are also finding out about the rewards, and by using open source, contributing ideas and suggestions are finding it almost like they have people working for them for free.
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In the meantime, proprietary costs increase, to cover the development of new ideas and recoup some of the losses made by people choosing alternatives. Regardless of "which side of the fence" you sit on, I dont think it can be argued that MS is loosing money from all the governments that we have read about are shifting away from them.
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Add to this the fiasco of the Xbox 360, where (IMO) a decent platform was ruined by the fact that so many people had hardware problems and required a replacement, meant that MS, with the added problem of competition from Nintendo did not make much/if any profit on the system. (a report Ive read claimed they have not broken even)
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It seems to me that the MS good news for 2008 was all just announcements and plans. IMO there was no substance. It would be interesting to hear of what actually was good for the consumer from MS in 2008.
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How about the release of SeaDragon for the Iphone? Was this an act of kindness by MS to the iphone community or was it an addmition that another one of MS's main product lines was withering to more reliable and popular systems?
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I personally believe the year 2008, just like Vista is something that MS wants to brush under the carpet and quickly.
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My prediction will be that Win 7 will not be out until end of 2009 at the earliest. It is my opinion that this bug fixed Vista variant is waiting for technology to catch up with the specs it requires. The problem as I see it, is the global crisis. People are not buying new tech and want to keep their own specs and all the while IMO people are looking elsewhere.
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Canonical is due to release 9.04 in April (I believe) if it does live up to the promises that have been made, I can see it not only becoming the benchmark for all other distros, but also a major thorn in the side for MS who will be trying to convince people that they really should upgrade to Win 7. Although it does beg another question. If 9.04 becomes the "mainstream linux distro" would this be good for Linux as a whole? afterall Linux has thrived on diversity in its many distros. I think thats a question for another topic, and probably not one on the Microsoft Watch site.

Al wants to keep the readers from buying VCSY stock but he has bought and continues to buy it because Al knows that Microsoft wants the confidentiality of the settlement to protect their industry reputation and his motive is to lie and con as many shareholders out of their VCSY shares before it takes off.

@ InquiringMind: That press release was almost two years ago and that just shows the readers how far ahead VCSY/Now Solutions and Verizon were ahead of everyone else with the Cloud Computing.
Microsoft was only able to announce anything about Azure after they settled with VCSY.

Here is a newest press release from Now Solutions, if you read and understand it then you'll understand Al's agenda.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2008

NOW Solutions Announces On-Demand Integration

Fort Worth, TX, December 11, 2008 (PRNewswire)– Building on 35 years of leadership in the Payroll and Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) marketplace, NOW Solutions, Inc. (Now Solutions) announced today another significant advancement in its technology. NOW Solutions’ completely web-based solution, emPath®, was an early adopter of .net and ASP.net platforms, and emPath® has recently been enhanced to support Web Services.

The new Web Services feature for emPath® allows any application to have on-demand access to all of emPath's® built-in business rules, features and functionality. This enhancement expands the functionality of emPath® and opens our technology to effectively allow any application, on any platform, to fully integrate with this Web-based HRMS Solution. Using the new Web Services feature, an application can instantly call, execute, validate, update, and process any or all of emPath's® payroll and HR functions and features -- and at a substantially reduced cost. Users will benefit from significant incremental cost savings, both in installation and ongoing maintenance.

Marianne Franklin, President and CEO, stated: “ ‘On-demand’ access to this technology is an extraordinary step for NOW Solutions. It permits our best-of-breed HR and Payroll solution to be truly integrated with any application. For example, emPath could be accessed and updated by any of our customers’ Financial Solution, Student Information System, Patient Care System, Manufacturing Solution or other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications. This enhancement in our technology effectively eliminates the issue surrounding a company wanting a “one-brand” ERP solution. Our customers in Manufacturing, Health, Education, Banking and other industries can now easily exchange data and fully access product functionality from any brand of solution. In this challenging economic time, it is tempting for a Company to use the HR and Payroll solution bundled with its ERP offering. The ability to have emPath seamlessly integrate eases the burden and virtually eliminates the cost of exchanging data between one solution and another.”

Now Solutions’ continued success can be attributed to the robust, Web-based features and flexibility of its products. emPath® is an integrated HR payroll solution that provides a low total cost of ownership and a high return on investment while enabling users to improve decision-making capabilities.

http://www.vcsy.com/press/releases.php?year=2008&month=12&day=11&num=00

Cloud Computing is nothing more than mainframes reborn. Except that the mainframes run Unix, Linux, or Windows Server instead of VM and MVS.

And it's been around longer than 2 years. A LOT longer.

You can argue cloud computing all you want, but what is it really? Its rental software.

Thats right, Microsoft really wants to rent the software to you or your business, rather than selling you shrink wrap boxes. There is more money to be made by rentals than selling. Although if you (ugh) carefully read your Windows eula, you will find out you really are most likely just renting away.

Microsoft outlines pay-per-use PC vision

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10129438-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Quote: "Microsoft has applied for a patent on metered, pay-as-you-go computing.
U.S. patent application number 20080319910, published on Christmas Day, details Microsoft's vision of a situation where a "standard model" of PC is given away or heavily subsidized by someone in the supply chain. The end user then pays to use the computer, with charges based on both the length of usage time and the performance levels utilized, along with a "one-time charge.""
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I think this says it all, the future is renting from Microsoft, if you cannot manage to get the Monkey Boy Ballmer off your back and start using Free Software. distrowatch.com download a free version of linux today. chips recommends Mepis, PCLinux, and Mint.

A request for Joe Willcox: Joe can you release my previous post that is being withheld? Thank you.

Well, I will say I saw two things in 2008 that I never thought I would see just a couple of years ago:

1.) Dell openly advertising Linux as the OS of the Mini 9 in both catalog and black friday ads.

2.) A mainstream computer magazine doing a review on a Dell machine that comes preloaded with Linux and, while slightly panning the hardware, spending about 1/3 of the article introducing the reader to Ubuntu and the software it comes with and actually praising its features, usability, and performance.

Chips, I totally agree with you. Cloud computing IMO represents the biggest threat to computing freedom yet. Im not just talking about Linux or MacOS here, cloud computing represents an ethos where your software/storage is provided by people, who (I believe) will be supplying you your critical software on their terms.
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There will be no more independence or true personalization if this ever came about in the mainstream, and your functionality and productivity would be at the mercy of whatever company was providing your solutions. I know myself, should my provider go down or there to be a local network issue, I can still function albeit limited, but my software located elsewhere? no thanks. Richard Stallman has been very vocal on this subject, I fully support his views on this.
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To be honest though, in a world where business in the main was not willing to make a gamble with Vista, I cant see this cloud computing being anything more than a concept that is many many years ahead of its time. Sure, some small utilities may move to the cloud, afterall plenty of sites have online apps, but mainstream migration and centralisation of peoples core systems? I wont believe it, and I certainly dont think people will trust Microsoft to do it. They cant even keep their own blogs in order and free from spam, thats not even mentioning the repeated security flaws their software falls victim to.
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I would like to quote a term from Red Dwarf (a UK sci fi show) albeit slightly modified to be relevant here.
"Letting Microsoft have control of your software is like sticking your wedding tackle into a lions mouth and flicking its love spuds with a wet towel" - Arnold Rimmer. 2nd Technician. Jupiter Mining Corp.

Cloud computing has always represented technical lock-in, financial lock-in, and lack of control. The original IBM PC and Mac represented freedom from the cloud, allowing control to be taken directly by the end user.

Apple, Microsoft, and Intel are the top companies that built their fortunes on freeing us from the tyranny of cloud computing.

But I am puzzled by Microsoft's patent application. Time-share systems have always metered usage from the batch job days to the 3270 terminal days. This patent application reads as if it was written by IBM or Honeywell or Xerox back in the 1970s. Is Microsoft patenting metered time-share systems? By changing the names of the terms (time-share system becomes the cloud) and submitting it the den of stupidity, aka the USPTO, they just might get their patent. But they will also get run over.

Microsoft IMO appear to again, not understand the market. Either that or they believe IMO they can wield their once powerful influence and force the issue on people.
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Putting aside all the ethical issues of computing in the cloud, MS seems blissfully unaware of the market trend in the electronic world. True computing in the cloud says to me end of personalization of peoples systems, something which sells gadgets these days. Disagree? Look at the mobile phone market, for the domestic user in particular, one of the main selling points of phone is the ability to personalize it with backdrops, ringtones, utilities.
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For me computing in the cloud will be the end of all this, computing in the cloud will be the end of any freedoms we may have at the moment and the only entity which will get a benefit from computing in the cloud will be the company providing the service.
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Over on CNET they are reporting a very interesting patent (which inquiringmind mentions above) MS is involved with. Please read:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10129438-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
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and then tell me the future of computing in the cloud with Microsoft is in safe hands.

I have to agree with everyone else here. I personally don't trust the cloud with my personal information for the reasons given. What is to keep other organizations from data mining your information?

What is to keep the government from snooping into your files through the cloud?

What legeslation is implace in the United States to protect your rights and privacy?

I mean, look at this site already where anyone can grab anybody's user ID and run with it, and Joe doesn't really seem to care.

I think you'll see a lot of companies build internal clouds. It makes sense.

But trusting corporate data to someone elese's infrastructure?

What if they go out of business? Who moves your data to a new platform and at what cost? Who REALLY guarantee's the security and up time of your data? And how responsive to your requests for service will a cloud vendor be when they have you LOCKED IN? They own your ass. When I look at cloud computing all I see is a house of cards waiting to be toppled.

Quote The Hand "What is to keep the government from snooping into your files through the cloud?"
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Nothing, however in defense of Microsoft this is a simple job regardless of where your data is stored and who with.
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Even a private firm can quite easily get a court order to retrieve details and info (look no further than alleged file sharers), and now in this day and age, the anti-terror laws provide pretty powerful legislation on even the most intrusive of monitoring techniques.
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As much as I dislike the idea of any machine being controlled centrally by the people at Redmond, in respect of snooping by agencies I have no more concerns about than I do now. However in other areas of security such as industrial espionage or other criminal attacks, I have no faith in them whatsoever, and I believe that coupled with the fact that users want computing independence will be the thing that prevents this computing in the cloud idea taking off.

Thanks for banning me again Joe, and that last post was not mine.

@Goblin.

I think it already HAS taken off and Microsoft is playing catchup.

I worked for a company that provided such services to smaller and mid sized companies that either had no Internal network or moved all services to our datacenters. They accessed everything through Citrix over the internet. Directory services, Databases, E-mail, Office apps, files.... You name it we rented it. We were getting new clients faster than we could expand to handle them.

Ask me? It's an assinine way to do business. But it is undeniably a way to cut costs. Will private individuals move to the cloud? No.... People like ownership of their data. Business leaders on the other hand? Meh... They'll look at the bottom line first and worry about the consequences later.

Agreed Ghostmike, although I was more challenging the Redmond dream that one day we would all switch our computers on and be connect to a Redmond computer elsewhere, with our data and computing freedom in the hands of Mr Ballmer.
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I do agree there is a market for computing in the cloud, although maybe the saving money issue is a reason why more firms are considering open source instead of MS products.
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Ive seen an internal computing in the cloud type system myself, and I can certainly agree that in some, not all workplaces it would provide benefits.

On a positive note. Server virtualization might just save privately sourced networks.

The power and space requirements of a datacenter cease to be so much of a concern when 100 servers becomes 20 or even 10 powerful virtual machine hosts.

We've been slowly but surely moving our older boxes to virtualized platforms and there is definitely a cost savings on hardware. Given all of the barriers to cloud computing and the whole issue of confidentiality virtualization looks like a much smarter avenue.

And on top of that the cost and expandability of VM capable hardware is getting cheaper all the time.

You can get a HP server with 8 cores and 32 gigs of ram for a suprisingly low sum. That can host Novell, Windows, Linux, BSD.... you name it, all on one host.

Citrix, Microsoft, and VMWare all have technologies that allow you to host virtual desktops too. Move to a platform like that and you cut hardware and administration costs. Over the long term you'd get a much better return on investment without giving up control of your infrastructure.

In short the very technology that enables the cloud can render cost savings to smart companies without the outsourcing nightmare.

That's the long term goal at my firm. And thankfully it's a Banking institution. The regulators would crucify us if we tried to outsource our datacenter to some outside entity.