Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University
Written by Chris Peters
Sunday, 14 December 2003
This month, we are fortunate to speak with an industry leader about our future in general and Microsoft in particular.
Dr. Jeff Putnam is a software design and programming
instructor at Eastern Washington University. He holds two master's degrees in
mathematics and a doctorate in computer engineering. Additionally, Dr. Putnam
works closely within the IT industry as a software design
consultant.
MC Press: Dr. Putnam, within the world of colleges
and universities, there seems to be a degree of disdain for Microsoft. Why is
that?
Dr. Jeff Putnam: I wouldn't call it disdain, really.
More like distrust. Microsoft doesn't do a very good job of playing
fair--not that playing fair is something that corporations necessarily do.
Corporations have no soul to damn nor body to kick. So they're kind of immune to
those things that people can do. Microsoft, having as much money as it does, is
very immune.
I've talked to people who worked at software
companies that Microsoft has basically destroyed. They wanted the business. And
these are companies you know the names of, but because I was told these things
in confidence, I can't say what these things were. There are several instances
where there was a company that Microsoft has lied to, and then Microsoft has
gone off and said, "Well gee, we're not competing with you," and then actually
decided to compete with them and essentially kicked them out--destroyed the
market--and the smaller companies are now gone.
But it's not just lying
to them on a business level; it's lying to them on a technical level, too. For
example, at one point Microsoft told this one company, "Well, here's the API
that is going to be in the next release of Windows that will allow your product
to work." The company counted on that to allow their product to work and
to be able to ship immediately after the release of Windows. Microsoft took the
API out of the operating system. No, they didn't take it out; they just
renamed it. Which they then used in their competing Microsoft product.
What this means is a single vendor, Microsoft in this case, can essentially lock
everyone else out. And they've done that.
You may remember a spreadsheet
package called Lotus Improv. Best spreadsheet ever. It was available on the Next
system when Next was out. Absolutely the best spreadsheet I've ever used. But,
it wasn't Excel, it wasn't Lotus 1-2-3, so basically what happened is the
1-2-3/Excel kind of model pretty much killed off Improv because nobody wanted to
learn to use it. Even though it was 10 times more powerful and easier to use in
the long run.
So, if you don't use a Microsoft system, if you want to use
Linux or you want to use something else, you will rapidly discover how much of a
grip Microsoft has that people don't see. So you try to use Linux on something,
and you suddenly discover that you can't get drivers for something because
Microsoft has bought up all the rights to the hardware specifications or the
company won't release it because there's no market for anything but Microsoft
products. I've got hardware in my house right now that I can't use because the
only drivers that are available are for Windows. I paid good money for
it.
Try to buy a computer without Windows on it. Even if you don't want
Windows, you must pay the Microsoft tax. There's this thing about getting a
rebate if you don't want to use Windows. Nobody will give you the
rebate.
MC: A rebate for not using
Windows?
JP: If you accept the Windows EULA [End User License
Agreement], if you click through that, then Windows is loaded as your operating
system. If you do not click on that EULA, if you do not want
Windows as your operating system, then you're supposed to be able to go and get
a rebate for the price of all this Windows software. Except that Microsoft
wouldn't give it to you; the company that sold the computer to you wouldn't give
it to you. If you bought it in a store, the store wouldn't give it to you. Each
of these would just point to the next in line. And this is still the
case.
And in the colleges and universities, we're bringing up our
students to know only Microsoft. So basically, they have a stranglehold on the
industry. What they have done is make the industry such that if you don't
interoperate with Microsoft, if you don't go along with Microsoft, you might as
well not exist. But, of course, they hold all the standards. So that, for
example, to get into a .doc-formatted document, people have had to
reverse-engineer the format in order to make things work and to get something
else to write the format. And with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it gets
even worse. The DMCA says that Microsoft could withdraw all of its software
products from the marketplace and essentially make it illegal for you to read
your own files with a non-Microsoft piece of software.
And the funny
thing is, because of the way Microsoft has done this--actually, it's not that
funny; really, it's kind of tragic--a lot of really cool advances in the
industry have been lost, even on the Microsoft platform. When I started off, I
didn't care about Microsoft one way or the other. It was only when I started
using Linux that I began butting up against Microsoft, that I started to
discover all these things. Basically, people know I'm not a big Microsoft fan,
so they tell me all these stories.
MC: Is there anything good that
can be said about Microsoft?
JP: Yes, Microsoft has done some good
things in some ways. Some very good things. One of the things they have tended
to do is build a software monoculture where everyone is running essentially the
same platform. This can be a bad thing though. To use an analogy, consider the
fir trees in the western United States. Fir trees are all Douglas fir. Pretty
much all the fir trees are of the same species. So if a particular disease
should hit the area, all of the trees will be affected. So a certain amount of
diversity is a good thing.
However, the benefit of a platform grows
dramatically, maybe exponentially, with the number of people that use it. That
is, the benefit of 20 people using a piece of software is four times greater
than the benefit of 10 people using it. Files can be shared, and so on.
MC: What is the impact of Microsoft policy on the business sector in
general?
JP: Microsoft has made a practice of promoting and giving
software away until it becomes a standard and charging you over and over for it.
How many times have you bought Windows or Excel or Word? This has been very
expensive for the business community in the long run. And you can't move from
it. For IT organizations, this is a real pain and has probably cost 10 times
what it should.
Further, IT departments shouldn't be putting machines on
everyone's desk. Well, we should put machines on everyone's desk, but not ones
with disks in them.
MC: Thin clients?
JP: Thin
clients. Yeah, and I know the thin client thing has been around, and people
thought, "Gee, that was such a bad idea," but it's not, really. It's the best
idea. It's the way to do it. Because then you can have a single server, back
things up off the server, control access, and so on.
MC: The old
argument of central versus distributed processing?
JP: Yes, but
the nice thing about thin clients is the processing isn't really centralized.
The processing is distributed. The thing that's centralized is the software and
the data. You know, how many people back up the data under their desks? How many
people do that even within an IT department? Most of the desktop data is not
backed up. Most IT departments don't even have a program for it.
And part
of that is we've got this notion that desktop computers is what people want so
that's what people get. But some of that is because people learn the basics of
Excel and Word or whatever, and then they don't want to learn anything else
because they don't perceive it as being germane to the problem, it's not really
something they need to do, whatever the reasons. They want to stick with exactly
that and not change it. And that's a really serious problem.
For example,
Microsoft Word is the wrong solution for 90% of the problems it's used for.
There's no metadata in it. There are few templates and none that can index the
document content. There's no way to [programmatically] go into a business
letter, for example, that is written in Word and identify things like who the
letter is actually to. Typically, there may dates in the letter, but you can't
tell when the letter was actually sent. There's no metadata. So what we've done
is take three steps backward with something like Word. And now everyone has it,
and they don't want to do anything else because they already know how to do
this.
MC: How should documents be created then?
JP:
Going to an XML Smart Editor kind of thing, where you actually fill in
information according to a common set of metadata specifications, would be so
much better. Then, if you file all these things--rather than file them on paper,
file them electronically--if you file all these things, we can then search. For
example, "find all the documents sent on the topic of submitting bids sent
between January and June of that year." Now I'm willing to bet you can't do that
in 90% of the IT organizations around.
Why? There's no metadata. There
is nothing that says what this thing is. And yet that's exactly what you'd like
to be able to do: take the data out of those documents and find out what you've
bid. How many IT organizations have been successful in doing some sort of data
mining over documents like that? Nobody does that.
MC: How does
XML bear on this?
JP: XML is the technology to watch. It's been
belittled by a lot of people, even here at this university, saying there's
nothing to XML. In some ways they're right. There's almost nothing to XML. In
other ways, it's an enabling technology that's going to change more--way
more--than anyone can even imagine now.
There's a recent announcement on
slashdot.org about the new Longhorn, and Longhorn is going to be using XML in a
services-oriented architecture. XML is going to be the sub-strata. Imagine what
you can do with that if you have data in Access; you can get it out into an
Excel spreadsheet or into your word processor, whatever, and do it all in such a
way that you haven't lost what the data actually represents but you can change
the way it's displayed. Just because it's in XML doesn't mean you have to
display it that way.
Then, what we can start doing is putting things like
these business letters, marked up in XML appropriately, into some sort of
database in the right way. And now suddenly that's part of your organization's
data, accessible to a variety of applications and stored
centrally.
Next month's column will continue the interview with Dr.
Putnam and his thoughts about the future of our
industry.
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 18 2003 16:42:00
Bill,<BR>
<P>
I think you're confusing monopoly with regulation. SCE is a monopoly<BR>
regulated or not. The fact that they can charge whatever they want,<BR>
justified or not, doesn't change the fact that they're a monopoly.<BR>
<P>
chuck<BR>
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.<BR>
<P>
"Bill" <Bill_Robins@mcpressonline.com> wrote in message<BR>
news:336A05192BFF78E104EDE9367444A8F5@in.WebX.WawyahGHajS...<BR>
> Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> > Since the deregulation of the electrical companies, electrical prices<BR>
> > have skyrocketed. (Did you miss that one? It was in all the papers.)<BR>
> > There have been a number of featured L.A. Times articles showing that<BR>
> > businesses have had to close their doors because of skyrocketing<BR>
> > prices. This affected all electrical companies in California<BR>
> > including SCE, PG&E, etc., save one.<BR>
><BR>
> But this directly flys in the face of your statement that SCE is a<BR>
monopoly<BR>
> and because of it's monopoly status it forced businesses to close. But<BR>
now<BR>
> you say that it was the deregulation of this monopoly that caused the<BR>
price<BR>
> increase. When SCE was a monopoly, energy was "affordable", but when it<BR>
> was deregulated the prices jumped.<BR>
><BR>
> > DWP, however, did not deregulate. Those within the city limits of<BR>
> > L.A. are fortunate since their electrical bills have not increased.<BR>
> > In fact, DWP makes enough profit selling electricity to other<BR>
> > electric companies that they could go without charging their<BR>
> > customers and still make a profit.<BR>
> ><BR>
> > Just goes to show that deregulation of everything is not good.<BR>
><BR>
> So, now you are saying that some monopolies are preferred - which I agree<BR>
> with.<BR>
><BR>
> Bill<BR>
><BR>
><BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 18 2003 13:45:00
Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> Since the deregulation of the electrical companies, electrical prices<BR>
> have skyrocketed. (Did you miss that one? It was in all the papers.)<BR>
> There have been a number of featured L.A. Times articles showing that<BR>
> businesses have had to close their doors because of skyrocketing<BR>
> prices. This affected all electrical companies in California<BR>
> including SCE, PG&E, etc., save one.<BR>
<P>
But this directly flys in the face of your statement that SCE is a monopoly<BR>
and because of it's monopoly status it forced businesses to close. But now<BR>
you say that it was the deregulation of this monopoly that caused the price<BR>
increase. When SCE was a monopoly, energy was "affordable", but when it<BR>
was deregulated the prices jumped.<BR>
<P>
> DWP, however, did not deregulate. Those within the city limits of<BR>
> L.A. are fortunate since their electrical bills have not increased.<BR>
> In fact, DWP makes enough profit selling electricity to other<BR>
> electric companies that they could go without charging their<BR>
> customers and still make a profit.<BR>
><BR>
> Just goes to show that deregulation of everything is not good.<BR>
<P>
So, now you are saying that some monopolies are preferred - which I agree<BR>
with.<BR>
<P>
Bill<BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 17 2003 13:59:00
Bill,<BR>
<P>
Since the deregulation of the electrical companies, electrical prices have<BR>
skyrocketed. (Did you miss that one? It was in all the papers.) There have<BR>
been a number of featured L.A. Times articles showing that businesses have<BR>
had to close their doors because of skyrocketing prices. This affected all<BR>
electrical companies in California including SCE, PG&E, etc., save one.<BR>
<P>
DWP, however, did not deregulate. Those within the city limits of L.A. are<BR>
fortunate since their electrical bills have not increased. In fact, DWP<BR>
makes enough profit selling electricity to other electric companies that<BR>
they could go without charging their customers and still make a profit.<BR>
<P>
Just goes to show that deregulation of everything is not good.<BR>
<P>
BTW, SCE is not one of the finer companies around. They have a habit of<BR>
overcharging people, especially the elderly. When you call them they<BR>
immediately reduce your bill. I know, my mother was scammed by them,<BR>
overcharged by $500 per month for 3 months. AFAIK, Microsoft hasn't pulled<BR>
off this scam.<BR>
<P>
chuck<BR>
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.<BR>
<P>
<P>
"Bill" <Bill_Robins@mcpressonline.com> wrote in message<BR>
news:59242C309EC3D0E2D5B5E88FA48C77F7@in.WebX.WawyahGHajS...<BR>
> Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> > Bill,<BR>
> ><BR>
> > Apparently you haven't seen the cost of electricity in California.<BR>
> > It has been the demise of many businesses lately.<BR>
><BR>
> Chuck,<BR>
><BR>
> I also live in Southern California. For you to intimate that either SCE<BR>
or<BR>
> DWP have forced businesses out through their influence as a monopoly is<BR>
> astounding.<BR>
><BR>
><BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 17 2003 12:42:00
Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> Bill,<BR>
><BR>
> Apparently you haven't seen the cost of electricity in California.<BR>
> It has been the demise of many businesses lately.<BR>
<P>
Chuck,<BR>
<P>
I also live in Southern California. For you to intimate that either SCE or<BR>
DWP have forced businesses out through their influence as a monopoly is<BR>
astounding.<BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 16 2003 18:25:00
Bill,<BR>
<P>
Apparently you haven't seen the cost of electricity in California. It has<BR>
been the demise of many businesses lately.<BR>
<P>
chuck<BR>
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.<BR>
<P>
"Bill" <Bill_Robins@mcpressonline.com> wrote in message<BR>
news:3E06B9F59C64114835C981D94A597B96@in.WebX.WawyahGHajS...<BR>
> Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> > It appars that hstoddard hasn't seen my electrical company, or my<BR>
> > cable company, or OPEC, or Intel, or the RIAA, or...<BR>
><BR>
> HStoddards point was that Microsoft has forced businesses out of business.<BR>
> Of those you mentioned, who could they force out of business?<BR>
><BR>
> The only company on scale with Microsoft is WalMart.<BR>
><BR>
> Bill<BR>
><BR>
><BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 16 2003 13:46:00
Chuck Ackerman wrote:<BR>
> It appars that hstoddard hasn't seen my electrical company, or my<BR>
> cable company, or OPEC, or Intel, or the RIAA, or...<BR>
<P>
HStoddards point was that Microsoft has forced businesses out of business.<BR>
Of those you mentioned, who could they force out of business?<BR>
<P>
The only company on scale with Microsoft is WalMart.<BR>
<P>
Bill<BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 15 2003 16:30:00
hstoddard said: "Microsoft has ... developed an industrial stranglehold on a<BR>
scale never seen before."<BR>
<P>
It appars that hstoddard hasn't seen my electrical company, or my cable<BR>
company, or OPEC, or Intel, or the RIAA, or...<BR>
<P>
chuck<BR>
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.<BR>
<P>
<P>
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 15 2003 15:22:00
I felt that Microsoft's control over everything was pretty well demonstrated when the government's anti-trust suit was settled by Microsoft being "forced" to sell to the public -- at top dollar -- yet another operating system. <p>Microsoft has been forcing competitors out of business one way or another for close to 20 years and has developed an industrial stranglehold on a scale never seen before. Why would anyone trust them?
Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University Dec 15 2003 15:22:00
This is a discussion about <B>Microsoft Computing: An Interview with Dr. Jeff Putnam of Eastern Washington University</b>.<p align='center'><a href=http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc?1@232.1KNKfHX1eQT.17@.6ae849f7>Click here for the article</a>.</p>
