MBA Assignments & Exams, Rolemaster Playtesting, MS-Windows 7

[tcpip]

Last week received results for my first two MBA assignments; Management Perspectives 67.5% (meh), Financial Management 88% (woot!). In the former, my marks were lower because I left out perspectives such as "Porter's Five Forces", the "McKinsey 7-S model" and so forth. If this sounds like management-babble that's because it is. I am somewhat horrified by how intellectually lightweight management theory actually is. There is a lot of influence from the latest popular psychology and material from actually practising managers who seem to owe their position more to luck, gender and school connections. In any case, exams are next week I've I've started putting together study notes from the course material. For my next two courses (and thus completing the Grad Cert level) I'll probably be taking Marketing (which should be a doddle with my background) and Managing Information Systems, which should be more challenging.

With the release of a playtester version of Rolemaster Cyradon I've been running scenarios with the three groups that I do regular face-to-face gaming with. Cyradon is pretty much generic fantasy, in many ways reminiscent of Rolemaster's old default game-world, ShadowWorld. That means there is a science-fantasy background in the distant past (thus one can integrate components of SpaceMaster), plus a reduced number from the standard set of fantasy 'races'; elves, dwarves, gnomes and lizard-men are all present. There is a group that physically resembles orcs, the gryx, but with a more peaceful outlook. Added to the mix are gryphons as potential PCs. The system is, well Rolemaster with some slight modifications, with both the benefits and problems of that game. Character generation still takes too long, the skill system is simple, combat is colourful with random deadliness, and the magic system certainly requires experienced players.

On Friday night went to an MS-Windows "7" (more marketing nonsense; it's actually NT v6.1.7) launch party (parody available) that was hosted at our work. A substantial number of our rusted-on pro-Linux systems team were present and, in all honesty, I cannot see any real advantages to Microsoft's latest release. Yes, it's better that Windows Vista, but that's hardly a great achievement. Big selling features supposedly include virtual folders, some user interface changes, and keyboard shortcuts - none of which are exactly great (or particularly new) improvements. It would be interesting to see if Windows 7 is still tied to DRM as its predecessor. Overall, there is no good reason to upgrade from Windows XP especially at the price tag that Windows "7" comes with; and I suspect the market will respond in kind.

Comments

[tangent_woman]

'Gratz on the assignment grades. You might like to try considering the education you got about education in not getting as good a mark as you would have liked for the Management Perspectives assignment as a kind of compensation? The formulaic tick-a-box style of assessments strike me as twee and minimalistic and as a wasted opportunity for both students and educators alike. But I suppose when they have to comply to a set curriculum and auditable standard, the check-box approach is nearly inevitable.

[tcpip]

Well, the tick-a-box was really what a fair bit of the Financial Management was - calculating ratios etc. So it was either you used the right formula and gave the right answer or you didn't. There was however, about 50% of the grade from an interpretation of a balance sheet and profit/loss. Apparently I did well there too.

Management Perspectives was a bit weird. I picked a few of the more obvious theoretical frameworks that seemed to make sense, left out plenty and drew conclusions which were apparently sound. I guess the weakness in that course is that because management theory is so undeveloped that anything perspective taken will be out of date by the following year or two.

[beagl.livejournal.com]

"more marketing nonsense; it's actually NT v6.1.7"

I see that you got totally sucked into the marketing that started the NT version numbering from 3.1

"Windows 7" works well enough for me, both as a product name and a product.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh, good point. What was so wrong with using... oh, I don't know.. Years as a numbering system?

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

A tendency to miss deadlines by more than one year?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heheh.. I come from the school of marketing that says that successes and failures are expressed. :)

[zey.livejournal.com]

Overall, there is no good reason to upgrade from Windows XP especially at the price tag that Windows "7" comes with; and I suspect the market will respond in kind.

Personally, I think Apple and Linux have had their chance at taking the mainstream market — actually, two chances if you count Windows ME — and they've both blown it (each for their own different reasons).

Windows 7 will sell well (at OEM pricing), particularly as the hardware market is now hovering at the 3.5G RAM barrier. On a lot of old hardware, they're not going to be able to address more RAM without going 64-bit, and 64-bit support is a lot more mature in Vista/Seven than it was on XP. The other huge benefit for business users is the stronger controls on desktop profiles that came with Vista. Vista's other problems outweighed the benefits, but, Windows 7's improvements will tip that balance.

Kerry Packer once said that you only get one Alan Bond in your life. Microsoft's had the luck of the Irish to get away with two monumental stumbles.

[neoookami.livejournal.com]

Honestly Windows 7's managed to impress me, quite a bit. The last major version of Windows I liked was 2000. XP had some modest improvements, but nothing world shaking other than extending NT officially to home use. Vista had some smart ideas, but largely clumsily implemented. 7 takes Vista's mistakes and cleans them up a bit, while putting together a rather slick UI. Plenty of elements "inspired" from other places, but overall it's the first version of Windows I can see myself using for a desktop in a long, long while.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sure, XP wasn't a great advance over 2000 - and it took quite a few years before it had a greater market share than Windows 2000 (it wasn't until 2005, iirc). As Vista was a retrograde step, well, you might be right; it will advance faster. I'd say by 2012 Windows 7 will surpass XP in terms of market share.

[zey.livejournal.com]

I'm not totally sold on everything in the Windows 7 UI (particularly the abandonment of menubars), but, in general it's now something I could get used to. Vista was an abomination.

[neoookami.livejournal.com]

And sorry about that, meant to reply that at the root, not to your post. :)

[zey.livejournal.com]

Hehe, not to worry. What annoys me is when I'm responding to someone's comment and LJ places my reply as a response to the main article instead.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You have a good point re: RAM. It's not too much of a victory tho', one by default.

As for Apple/Linux going into the mainstream market.. I think it's going to a long hard slog.. The sort of metric were they both gain maybe .5% or even less per annum. But the overall trajectory should be obvious.

[zey.livejournal.com]

It's not too much of a victory tho', one by default.

I think they'll take any win as a good one ;).

As for Apple/Linux going into the mainstream market.. I think it's going to a long hard slog. [...] But the overall trajectory should be obvious.

Nah, Apple's had their chance. If they'd been paying attention, they'd have put their foot to Microsoft's throat in the Vista era.

Instead, they've got an entry-level Mini with last year's parts at premium prices (and a further mark-up for non-US customers of between 30%-50%) — and still no desktop machine aimed at the largest segment of users: office workers needing a box with desktop hardware in it (rather than the iMac's laptop hardware or the over-priced and over-featured Mac Pro).

With new shiny from Microsoft that's both "pretty enough" and "good enough", Apple gets to compete for mainstream users on price and software range where they'll fail dismally. Good thing for them they've largely moved their business into mobile phones and handhelds ;).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think they'll take any win as a good one ;).

Well, in the short term that gives them breathing space, but it's not what one would call a long-term business strategy.

Apple's had their chance. If they'd been paying attention, they'd have put their foot to Microsoft's throat in the Vista era.

You may have a point there; Apple does have about 50% of the asset base of MS, so they should be able to make more of a go of it - but of course, this is a market with significant barriers to entry - mostly the prior knowledge and familiarity of existing users and the range of software applications.

(For a similar reason, scientific computing is almost all Linux. Trying to find scientific applications that actually run on a MS-Windows cluster is a little uncommon).

Good thing for them they've largely moved their business into mobile phones and handhelds ;).

Which increasingly are the personal computer of choice for a lot of people!

Hmmm.. I wonder what game Google is going to play in all this..

[zey.livejournal.com]

Well, in the short term that gives them breathing space, but it's not what one would call a long-term business strategy.

Yep, in the longer term, their software business model is cactus. They have ReactOS breathing down their neck to replace Windows (ReactOS development will really ramp up when their OS goes into and comes out of beta) and OpenOffice already replaces MS Office in the home office for lots of people :).

Microsoft have been putting a lot of effort and money into their search engine, games platforms and handheld media players though, so they've at least got a Plan B.

Which increasingly are the personal computer of choice for a lot of people!

They're definitely a significant platform, but, they're really an additional platform rather than a replacement one. I can't picture office workers writing and printing their reports from their iPhones ;)

Hmmm.. I wonder what game Google is going to play in all this.

They have the potential to give Apple a scare with Android if Apple doesn't do something serious about their monumentally broken apps approval process. They're definitely the standard Microsoft wants to beat with its Bing search engine.

AJAX apps are fine and all for what they are, but, I can't see their mooted cloud/web-OS winning on the desktop. It has the smell of dot-com boom scale marketing hype.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The comment on OpenOffice is interesting because of the familiarity issue I raised previously. Firefox has been able to become a serious competitor to Internet Explorer pretty much because a dead-end user can install it (like any other software) and run it like IE without too much trouble. When OpenOffice can do the same in comparison to MS-Office (even if an older version because frankly, the new versions are increasingly weird) then OO.org will have its day.

Fully fledged OSs don't have that luxury, thus any improvements will be quite incremental.

Microsoft have been putting a lot of effort and money into their search engine, games platforms and handheld media players though, so they've at least got a Plan B.

*nods* This is true. They have also started to move in the HPC world, now making up fully 0.5% of the top 500 supercomputers.

[zey.livejournal.com]

OpenOffice is a an odd one. UI-wise, it was once vaguely close to some older versions of MS Office (this was back in the StarOffice 4/5 days) but Microsoft's Office UI has diverged a bit since then.

New switchers will probably complain about the differences, but, I've always found it pleasant that the controls are pretty much the same as ever. My first exposure to it was StarOffice 3, and I love it that I haven't been forced to relearn a completely new office app UI every few years.

One thing I'm really hoping is that the OO.org crowd avoid any switch to using ribbons instead of menus for Vista/Seven. Firefox have been making noises suggesting that may be in their future :(

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The main (and indeed only) weakness with OpenOffice was that its database support was a bit wonky once upon a time. It was once reported to have 20% market share, but I suspect that was completely wrong. Even with alliances with Google and IBM it hasn't taken off the way it should have. That's somewhat of a mystery to me given how annoying MS Office is (the user interface being one element). It does have stability issues, but its recovery is pretty good. So what gives?

[zey.livejournal.com]

The main complaints I've heard about OO is it's UI feels sluggish and bloaty and its spreadsheet isn't 100% Excel compatible with some of the more advanced stuff.

I don't use spreadsheets to that level, so it's never affected me there.

They're right about OO being a bit of a hog though: it's been that way ever since StarOffice 4 when StarDivision merged what were previously a group of separate apps into one. (It probably paid resource use benefits to power users, but, casual users tend to only fire up one tool at once and loading up a huge wad of stuff they're not going to use hits performance.)

All that said, it's still a mystery why it's not doing a lot better, considering it's free (as in beer) and MS Office is quite expensive. Perhaps it's all the various educational institutions and businesses who explicitly require Word ${VER} compatible documents and lots of people not realising OO has a "Save as..." feature.

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

OO was sluggish but it has been quite fast for 2 years or so.
Frankly very few people use a spreadsheet where you'll see the differences between Excel and OO. But there are differences, but at a level where if you use that feature you need to be aware of what you are doing.
I have found file incompatibility no worse than between different versions of M$ Office but that's not saying much.
If M$ had adopted the Open Document Format then none of this would be a problem, but being a monopolist they didn't, the file format is one of their defences against fair competition.

[zey.livejournal.com]

OO was sluggish but it has been quite fast for 2 years or so.

I suspect that may be the result of your own hardware catching up. I haven't upgraded my box for a few years and OO feels just as sluggish as ever (no change either way).

Frankly very few people use a spreadsheet where you'll see the differences between Excel and OO. But there are differences, but at a level where if you use that feature you need to be aware of what you are doing.

Casual spreadsheet users like you and I won't notice much difference. It's the power users in larger business settings who get hit by it most.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a loyal OO user from the early days and still find it surprising it's not taken over the home user and small business space, but, I can see why it's not the bees knees for everyone.

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

Actually my hardware has been consistent over the last 4 years or indeed has gone slower, since I tend to use a netbook with a 1.33Mhz Atom processor.

I am not at all sure I am a casual spreadsheet user.

How do you know if you're a casual or power user?

[zey.livejournal.com]

Actually my hardware has been consistent

We may have to chalk this up to different experiences then, unless either of us cares enough to dig for comparative benchmark statistics.

How do you know if you're a casual or power user?

Hard to say with specifics, as I'm not a spreadsheets power user myself. I use them to tally rows of data and so on, but, that's about it. I guess the key question would be: Do you write spreadsheets for other people to use in a professional environment as a part of your job?

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

Not sure that either want total dominance for different reasons.
Apple has a very nice market share, thank you, far bigger than many car manufacturers thank you, and make a healthy profitable return on it.
Linux is the system for servers, and I am not sure that any organisation really wants to push at the level needed to break through, the freedom and independence of FOSS is just too much fun to standardise and push.

Windows 7 will slowly, very slowly, gain ground.

But remember.. Windows is dominany because it is a monopoly that governments don't seem willing to break up. Imagine if you only had 1 car manufacturer or 1 fuel supplier, with no regulation?

[zey.livejournal.com]

Not sure that either want total dominance for different reasons. Apple has a very nice market share

4% outside the US seems pretty limp to me. A lot of that's to do with the extraordinary price mark-up for overseas buyers — and that's lumped on top of the fabled Apple Tax the Americans complain about.

far bigger than many car manufacturers thank you

Lets not go there. Invoking the car industry in a Mac thread is the local equivalent of Godwin's Law. Computers aren't cars. Lets keep discussing computers.

and make a healthy profitable return on it.

Exactly. They're not at all interested in the mainstream computer market, which is the principle reason why they're not going to take it over. They're happy in their niche, so they passed on their opportunity.

Windows 7 will slowly, very slowly, gain ground.

I'm expecting the take-up to be relatively fast, personally. There's a lot of pent up demand for something new, and you can expect all those large businesses with volume and site licensing to migrate quite happily.

But remember.. Windows is dominant because it is a monopoly that governments don't seem willing to break up.

Completely false, I'm afraid. During times of complete release failure (like Windows ME and Windows Vista), the market's absolutely there for the taking by a better alternative where it exists and it goes for the killer blow. Ask Ashton Tate where their Lotus 1-2-3 market went. Ask SSI where their WordPerfect market went. Both were by far the dominant products of their generation until they rested on their laurels and their competitor came along and ate their lunch.

Apple and Linux have both lost their opportunity to take the OS market in this generation, completely off their own respective bats, by squandering their opportunity when it came.

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

I think you underestimate the power of a monopoly. They need state intervention to break up for a variety of reasons, one of which is inertia and critical mass. Windows has a variety of active monopoly tricks to support it (see documented examples of M$ abusing market power to destroy opposition) and passive monolpoly facts (de facto proprietary standards, inertia, etc).

There is a reason economists seriously dislike monopolies.

And cars are in fact quite similar..

[zey.livejournal.com]

I think you underestimate the power of a monopoly. [...] Windows has a variety of active monopoly tricks to support it (see documented examples of M$ abusing market power to destroy opposition) and passive monolpoly facts (de facto proprietary standards, inertia, etc).

Now don't get me wrong: they've certainly used their position to cruel other companies products before (DR-DOS and Netscape in particular). They're the 800 pound gorilla in the market and it's a good thing that they have the DoJ breathing down their necks and the European Commission hitting them with fines where appropriate and enforcing things like the browser ballot.

However — they're not a monopoly in the market... not even in the specific market of Windows platform providers: you can run your Windows apps in WINE, Bordeaux and ReactOS. Alternatively, you can choose Linux, one of the BSDs or a Mac. All of them are fine operating systems with strengths and weaknesses that make them better or worse for particular tasks.

Nobody forces companies and individuals (outside of their workplaces) to use Windows. Nobody forces developers to program for Windows — hell, I'm a little one-man ISV and my apps are released for Windows, Mac and Linux — and if I'm doing it, trust me, anyone can. I'm able to do that because I actively made a decision to.

And cars are in fact quite similar.

Not similar enough to not muddy the waters every time they come up in computing debates as bad analogies. The worst thing about them is debates end up side-tracked into why the analogy is good or bad, straying from whatever it was originally intended to shine light on. Honestly, it's a Godwin's Law special case.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

They are not an absolute monopoly but they're pretty close. They go out of their way to ensure competitive advantage of their market position to maintained.

Some MS-Windows applications run in Wine, but no Linux applications run in MS-Windows. OpenOffice can save files in MS-Office format, but MS-Office cannot read OpenOffice files. This is how a monopoly ensures that it retains market dominance.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Some MS-Windows applications run in Wine, but no Linux applications run in MS-Windows.

Most Linux apps have Windows ports available — from the command shell through to GIMP, Xchat, Apache, and so on. If anything, you could say Microsoft are at a disadvantage here. It's easier to migrate binaries off their products and onto their competitors systems than it is to do the opposite :).

OpenOffice can save files in MS-Office format, but MS-Office cannot read OpenOffice files. This is how a monopoly ensures that it retains market dominance.

WordPefect would have died an even quicker death if they couldn't import their competitors files. If anything, file import capability is a strong feature that MS Office is missing and hurts them. I've switched a couple of home users to OpenOffice on this alone (where a new version of MS Office couldn't read an old MS Office's file format, OO could) :).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It cuts both ways; the minority market application must make their product compatible with the monopolist. The monopolist must ensure that their product is not compatible with the competitor.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

During times of complete release failure (like Windows ME and Windows Vista), the market's absolutely there for the taking by a better alternative where it exists and it goes for the killer blow. Ask Ashton Tate where their Lotus 1-2-3 market went. Ask SSI where their WordPerfect market went.

I actually think that proves Tom's point rather than disproves it.

The monopoly is the operating system. So MS can release something like ME or Vista and all that will happen is that people will stick with an earlier version (Win98 and WinXP in these cases). Applications are a different kettle of fish; they can be changed because it doesn't change the core OS. Indeed users probably prefer tighter integration with the OS, even thought that enhances the monopoly; thus WordPerfect and Lotus lost out to MS-Office.

Firefox has been a success story probably because IE has been forced to decouple from the OS (and it comes with a small mountain of very useful modular plugins, e.g., Adblock) plus it has been a technology leader rather than follower (e.g., tabs). Apart from getting ODF (which MS quashed with typical monopolistic behaviour) OpenOffice does not have these characteristics.

[zey.livejournal.com]

The monopoly is the operating system. So MS can release something like ME or Vista and all that will happen is that people will stick with an earlier version (Win98 and WinXP in these cases).

Well, they can switch to Linux and run their Windows apps from WINE (whether from their repositories or in the form of a commercially supported WINE like Bordeaux). They can run their Windows apps in ReactOS (with varying degrees of success, though that's improving). They can bite the bullet and switch to another operating system entirely and use non-Windows apps that do much the same things (often provided for free, courtesy of the FOSS movement).

They actively make a choice not to use any of these alternatives or they pay the price by not researching these alternatives. Just like in any market.

Indeed users probably prefer tighter integration with the OS, even thought that enhances the monopoly; thus WordPerfect and Lotus lost out to MS-Office.

Have a read of Almost Perfect a now-free book online by W. E. Peterson, an insider to the rise and fall of WordPerfect. The long and short of it is, they thew their market away themselves through management ineptitude and poor decisions. Microsoft played the turtle and brought their products up to scratch, SSI played the sleeping hare and watched their customers (annoyed by buggy releases) jump ship.

Firefox has been a success story probably because IE has been forced to decouple from the OS (and it comes with a small mountain of very useful modular plugins, e.g., Adblock) plus it has been a technology leader rather than follower (e.g., tabs).

Firefox benefited greatly from Microsoft's giving them the opportunity by all but closing down MSIE development for many years at version 6. As its bugs were increasingly exploited, and MSIE6's reputation was lying in tatters, Firefox came in and are now currently eating their rather large lunch :).

MS seems to be now essentially ceding the browser market, as they've found it really only brings them headaches. They'll keep MSIE going as a walking zombie (think Netscape after AOL bought them) to keep face and a few customers happy, but, it won't be the big priority it once was. That position in their heart is now occupied by the search market.

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat horrified by how intellectually lightweight management theory actually is. There is a lot of influence from the latest popular psychology and material from actually practising managers who seem to owe their position more to luck, gender and school connections.

I'm so glad to hear someone else say that too :)

PS let me know if any of your RPG games could use an extra player.

[zey.livejournal.com]

A book you both may like: Fad Surfing in the Boardroom: Reclaiming the Courage to Manage in the Age of Instant Answers by Eileen C. Shapiro. Features excellent chapters picking apart various management theory fads.

It was always pleasant reading, even while the managers were attempting to put their collective flights of fancy into place.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear someone else say that too

I suspected I may not be alone in this assessment. :)

Off the top of my head, who is a management theorist of note? Peter Drucker iswas one, certainly. I'll confess to liking Stephen Covey's work as well; indeed there is even some moral theory among his leadership proposals. But who else?

Michael Porter? No thanks. He represents what is wrong with business theory. He wants businesses to become monopolies.

Any others... Or was that a tumbleweed that just went past?

PS let me know if any of your RPG games could use an extra player.

Face-to-face or PBeM? Or both? ;)

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

Morality in business management? Crazy talk!
I'll look up your suggestions, since my position (systems architect) is pretty much right alongside management now.

I tend to think of Monopolies as the unstated end-goal of all businesses (taken as an entity unto themselves). I don't claim to know how that fits with Capitalism as a theory/philosophy. I seem to see a lot of rabid self-proclaimed right-wing convervatives making the patently incorrect assumption that market forces alone counteract monopolistic tendencies. I think they're deluded.

face-to-face or PBEM<\I>
I've been missing face-to-face gaming of late (but obviously understand if you don't want a virtual stranger muscling in). Never really got the hang of PBeM

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* Every right-wing businessman (and it usually is a -man) who argues for free markets secretly wants to be a government supported monopoly.

Face-to-face gaming is fine.. We have a regular session on Sundays at 110 Grey St East Melbourne, starting at 2pm. Current games are GURPS and RuneQuest.