Microsoft Accused of Squandering Billions On R&D 580
Julie188 writes "Even as Microsoft celebrates its 10,000th patent, angry shareholders are starting to speak out against what they say is the squandering of billions of dollars on pointless R&D projects. The 10,000th patent covers a technology that allows a device to associate data with objects placed on its surface, and is likely eventually to become part of the Surface table PC. But shareholders are fed up with the $8 billion annually spent. Said one, 'I believe Bill Gates is a charlatan because what he has said, implied, promised to shareholders and stakeholders and all of these visionary things that he mumbles and jumbles about and doesn't make reality of. MS is spending billions of dollars on R&D. Where is the return on investment?' In contrast, Apple had almost the same revenue gains as Microsoft while spending one-tenth as much."
Re:Death march (Score:5, Funny)
These days Gates only owns about 8% of MSFT. He probably has greater influence than his ownership. At $10,000 apiece, all MSFT has to do is sell 800,000 Surface tables and they've got their money back. I mean who doesn't want a big-ass kiosk in their home. :P
And all I got was... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Me thinks... (Score:5, Funny)
Keep going, you almost had a fresh prince going there.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
What?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They aren't investors (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
(...)
$ ls -l
brwxr-xr-- ballmer execs 4 1954-11-03 20:31
$ echo "So thats what the problem is"
Kernel Panic - not syncing
WTF
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Why is this modded funny - he is still chairman of the board!
Sound investment strategy: (Score:1, Funny)
1. Find a company who's CEO you believe to be a "charlatan who wastes billions on pointless projects."
2. Invest heavily.
Blaming Bill Gates??? (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA:
Dude! You loaded up on the stock of a company whose products you don't even like, and watched it lose half its value without liquidating your position, and you're blaming Bill Gates for your problems???
Re:Stalemate. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's always dividends... If Apple can do it on half the budget, and Linux can do it on what, 1/100th the budget (veeeery rough estimation, folks)?
Maybe what they need to do is to point their R&D in better directions, shake up its staff hard (starting at the top), and roll the rest into dividends.
This way the shareholders will be less sue-happy, they don't fall afoul of monopoly concerns, and they might even get a bit of profit out of all that innovation they keep talking about. We also get better and/or decent new products as a side-benefit.
I know, too much to ask and all, but they're going to have to do something, what with their marketshare shrinking and all...
MS-Shareholders are short sighted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:to R&D or not to R&D (Score:3, Funny)
Windows XP and Vista and 7 of 9 or whatever the new one is to be called. What more do you blood suckers want?
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:3, Funny)
"He's still chairman of the board."
I thought Ballmer is the chair man.
M$ Money Was Spent on Intimidation (Score:1, Funny)
You should know by now twitter M$ used the money earmarked for "R&D" to intimidate [slashdot.org] all who resist M$ and non-free software. Anyone who is involved with this deception, including the one or those who was hired by M$ to post under numerous accounts should be arrested and tried for intimidation and fraud.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Two levels of deception. (Score:3, Funny)
Mod twitter funny.
You usually don't get to see this kind of schizophrenia outside of the movies. It's actually amusing to watch his paranoid delusions build on themselves, as the AC below (which is clearly twitter, again) shows.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:1, Funny)
Gets funnier everytime you say it.
PS. He really is still chairman of the board!
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe someone just decided to mod everything in this thread Funny?
Re:Bill Gates? Well.. (Score:3, Funny)
Ballmer CHAIRS the Board and he might CHAIR the BORED if he hasn't got their unprovided attention...
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)
Nope. He's just a chareholder. *rimshot*
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed, bashing Microsoft is inappropriate. But Python isn't the answer.
Microsoft should perled, for only then can you say
.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:3, Funny)
And the MS trolls prove it by jumping my shit :)
So, I'll say it again... Remember - investing in MS is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace.
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)
Mod parent informative, and greatgrandparent funny.
You still have to feel sorry for them ;) (Score:5, Funny)
You know, I was thinking much along the same lines. Go to court and tell them, "yeah, some of the R&D won't pay off, but the ones whic do allowed us to make X, Y and Z, and earn royalties from licensing W to other." Then I remembered it's Microsoft. I can just see it,
"Your honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, may I draw your attention to exhibit 1: without an R&D budget we couldn't have made the Zune. Erm, ok, so its market segment imploded to nearly zero during the Christmas period, but we couldn't have made it without R&D."
"Then we have our continued investment in expanding and improving our search engine business, so maybe one day it won't get its arse handed to it by Google that hard. In fact, I can sense a Google-killer coming. Step 3 in that business plan is that either an advanced extraterestrial civilization hands over their search engine, or the whole Google has a heart attack when we're around so we can claim the kill. Then one day maybe we can sell advertisments too and actually make an income out of it. But let's not get that far ahead of us."
"We have invested heavily in developing a state of the art DRM that will allow us to own the digital media market... at a time where DRM is producing more and more of an allergic reaction in the market, and the major media labels are experimenting with dropping DRM entirely. We think that the incompatible DRM and the 'plays for sure' thing not actually playing even on previous versions of itself are what helped kill the Zune, come to think of it."
"We have invested millions in the newest version of Internet Explorer, so, umm, it could continue to slowly lose market share to Mozilla and Opera. But without R&D, we wouldn't have had the new stuff in it. Ok, so it's a toolbar and browser tabs. You don't think that Mozilla's toolbar and tabs copied themselves into our product, do you? That's what we need R&D for."
"Then it's our R&D which produced such technologies as .Net and C#. Ok, so it just made Vista more bloated and everyone uses Mono for it anyway, but we think we at least managed to piss off Sun a little. And don't pay attention to claims that it just ripped off Java. If you'll look at the next exhibit, a simple C# program and its Java equivalent... you'll notice two extra curly braces per class and a typo in a keyword... err... I mean a new highly-innovative keyword. Clearly such visionary changes wouldn't happen without billions invested in R&D."
"We have also improved our Games For Windows brand name, and strengthened recognition of that brand, via innovative improvements that our talented R&D teams have produced. For example in Fallout 3 it made the game randomly crash when starting or exitting, and needed an extra patch just to fix that. It also created a demand for hacks to remove it from the victim... err... customer's computers. I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that now everyone knows about Games For Windows. Our data mining the web with our search engine has shown that nowadays the phrase Games For Windows shows up ten times more often than a year ago, though most often after the word 'fuck' or before the word 'sucks', or within the same paragraph as the phrase, 'how do I uninstall it?' You can't buy brand recognition like that with marketing alone."
"Then thanks to years of R&D, we have produced Vista. Umm... Your honour, can you make them stop laughing so I can continue? Thanks... We call Vista a great success, because almost everyone who got it on their computer, then bought Windows XP at a premium just to get a usable computer. So we sold them two operating systems, whereas without Vista they'd have only bought one. Everyone else sued us instead. And some did both."
"And speaking of Vista, our R&D has produced anot
Re:You still have to feel sorry for them ;) (Score:3, Funny)
the Zune. Erm, ok, so its market segment imploded to nearly zero during the Christmas period
Which is a shame. The Zune software is leaps and bounds better than that horrid abortion of software which is iTunes. The hardware seems better too; it's worked flawless for me (I have the 8GB model, so mine functioned fine on 1/1 or whatever that day was that the 120GB stopped). Even if I had one of the malfuctioning ones, it started working fine again the next day... unlike my wife's iPod Nano 2G, which has been nothing but trouble since day one. Skipping playback, repeating the same song over and over and over again, locking up, locking up iTunes just after it finishes syncing. I can't tell you how many time's I've had to totally reflash it, which keeps it working for about a day.
The killer is that everyone else she's talked to has problems; their solution.. buy a new one! Incredible. That seems to be a standard answer from "Mac Geniuses" too if something with Apple isn't working. They told me that, and the guy before me, and they guy after me. "well, it's 2g, and there's 3g now so just get that." Piss off.
Re:You still have to feel sorry for them ;) (Score:1, Funny)
C# is an awesome language and with ASP.NET pays my bills.
So, I, for one am a huge fan ASP.NET and C#.