What We've Known for a While...
We've all known for a while now... or certainly since a little revealing snippet showed up in a Dell document toward the end of last year... that Longhorn would leverage TPM 1.2.
That's the given. VANILLA is lovely. It's taken a while for some to develop a DEEP appreciation for it. But, there it is.
Timeframes? Well, good luck... with being CERTAIN about Microsoft and timeframes. One would have to be an "innocent" to feel completely comfortable with Microsoft's timeframes. One would have to be invested in some OTHER stock other than Wave to be completely happy if there are any significant delays.
Partnerships & Microsoft? LOL. The party to celebrate such a partnership, if it ever FORMALLY occurs, will be short-lived. It'll be a good party, though. If it's okay, I'll be the designated driver. Because Microsoft throws its drunken dance partners around like rag dolls.
Patents & Microsoft's being careful about not violating them? LOL. Pssst... THEY DON'T CARE about YOUR PROPERTY. They think this thing that you earnestly refer to as YOUR property is just THEIR PROPERTY-TO-BE. That is, if what you got is any good. Wanna make sure that in the eyes of Microsoft your property will truly and irrevocably be yours? Own really, really bad or dumb or broken stuff.
SKS knows how UNTRUSTWORTHY and tricky and foot-dragging and frustrating Microsoft can be. That's the good news. He indicated as much during remarks after the famous June 2002 SHM's formal session. I know that SKS isn't drunk with the Microsoft possibilities. So... on one level... I'm not too worried about how this plays out.
Microsoft is THE door for MASS VANILLA. VANILLAPALOOZA 2006!!!! BRING IT ON. If you like vanilla by the cups, you gotta love it by the BOATLOAD. And, frankly, ALL I'M INTERESTED IN IS MAKING SURE I HAVE ENOUGH SHARES to make this trip truly pay off. So, I welcome... our Microsoft masters.
In the meantime, there is a PARALLEL universe of opportunities... that lives in LINUX... in TrustZone... AMONG CABLE SYSTEMs... in the CELLPHONE market...in the CONSUMER ELECTRONICS space... and in some of what IBM is up to.
And that universe isn't OWNED by MICROSOFT... yet. I hope it's never owned by Microsoft. And I feel certain, thanks in part to Awk's awesome research, that it will NEVER be owned by Microsoft.
Choice and competition is good. Leverage is often about playing ONE go-reeeeela against another. No fun if you only got one GO-reeeeeela to play with.
Best Regards,
c m
