SingHash

Microsoft and Competitors Continue to Waste Resources on OOXML

"a colossal waste" indeed: MSXML (aka OOXML) itself is destined to be a colossal waste of money for absolutely everybody including Microsoft, which has squandered its own resources as well as those of countless others who have taken a stand against the idiocy of a soi-disant "standard" which cannot be implemented and is -- at best -- a sorely flawed replication of an existing standard (ODF) that has already proven itself.

I've read parts of the standard (not all 6000+ pages, I'm afraid), and the detractors have a valid point: it reads like it's written by software engineers pretending to be lawyers -- or vice versa.

Free Coffee at Starbuck: a Taste of Things to Come

I agree with swag (post on 4:54pm): the value of Starbucks lies not in being a reasonably cheap cup o', but rather in the entire experience.

My suggestion: Raise the price, grind the beans, and get rid of the kids' stuff. Throw out the schoolkids and the suits-with-laptops -- they just take up space and don't feed the till. And give me a nice biscuit with my cup of coffee.

I have THI for my cheap (though truly tasty) fix, and SBUX for the deluxe experience. Different days, different dates.

Ultimately, SBUX is about drinking coffee; HS & co would do well to jettison anything that doesn't contribute to the coffee drinking experience.

Microsoft: Skip Vista, Buy the Stock?

The small points of market gain for AAPL have immense leverage, and I believe JC is mistaken in dismissing the corresponding (very small) lost points for MSFT. Just a the "network effect" helped MSFT achieve dominance, the _unwinding_ of the network effect may be difficult to reverse.

Here's roughly how the story goes: when an influential stakeholder uses a Mac, it sends two signals. First, it becomes acceptable for other people to also have one. Second, business associates will have to adopt a greater degree of interoperability. Both of these phenomena lead to an accelerated unwinding of the network effect.

Certainly, a balance point will be reached -- AAPL's identity hinges on being slightly 'outside'. However, the blanket dominance of the monopolist will be broken, and people will use either platform (or Linux, or Solaris, or...) _because they want to_, and not because the herd requires them to do so.

Of course, I could be wrong. I sure was wrong when I bought equal-valued lots of MSFT and AAPL in late 1999!