Microsoft pays South Koreans $60 million to use its software
By Thomas Ricker 
posted November 3rd 2008 3:44AM
posted November 3rd 2008 3:44AM
It might make for good business practice, but damn if Microsoft's plan to "invest" in South Korea's software industry "as part of the US giant's drive to strengthen its presence in the country" doesn't sound a bit desperate. After all, shouldn't your software be so compelling that governments and companies fall all over themselves for the rights to use it (eh, hem: Android)? In a $60 million deal announced after Steve Ballmer Read -- $60,000,000 investment
Read -- Hyundai deal
Read -- LG and Microsoft
60 million is pocket change for Microsoft, i guess they see this as an investment being that people would get use to the software and stick with it. But i really see no reason for Microsoft to be doing this, their software is pretty much top of the line regardless of what the nay-sayer think.
You can low-rank this for all I care, but in any other industry, this would be called
A BRIBE!
You make bribing seem a good thing, regardless of Microsoft's products being top of the line (which I think they're not) but by doing this Microsoft is just widening it's range of software Monopoly and I think this is wrong, there are lots of better alternatives that get swept away by acts like this, someday people will be forced to buy 200$ upgrades and they couldn't even complain about it, I don't care if 60 mil is pocket money for Microsoft, this is wrong.
Actually in every other industry this is called investing in a market.
I'm not going to mark your comment down because I want others to see just how clueless you are.
Snarky and sophomoric humor is par for the course on Engadget, but this is the first time I've seen a bigoted posting. Microsoft is simply looking for an edge, and that has always meant hiring the brightest people, regardless of who--or of what nationality--they may be.
lol shut up Muhammed
But what about other IT or automobile companies investing in other countries to train engineers and set up tech and manufacturing centers for manufacturing their own goods?
Are they also paying or bribing the country so the locals will buy Toyotas or incorporate Motoral chips in their own products?
This post has a very skewed point of view.
I know, they would hate to see any other company use another OS with South Korean products. Another example of Microsoft extending its global reach. - Dragonkal8000
I wished they would pay ME for using vista!
oh yes, I should shut up.
and then I'll get brainwashed just like you.
for all I care I KNOW Microsoft doesnt play the game fair and square, I just learned not to post on Engadget for the rank, I dont give a shit about low ranks, and I dont care if you disagree with me, just say it politely.
Especially their development tools. The .Net framework is the best thing that happened to programming since objects.
This was supposed to be a reply to Nick (#1)
I agree with both of you.
Microsoft should have kept Simonyi on..IP could have been the future.
@ Troels C
Exactly, if anybody has ever used the .Net platform they would agree.
I have used .NET. C# in fact. And I can say I don't like it. I don't like that there's a new version of it every 6 months that's seemingly incompatible with the previous. I don't like that you have to have 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.5, etc. all installed at the same time. Take a queue from Java you idiots. The latest JVM will run all the old Java code without having the old JVM installed. Who thought of this architecture? It's stupid. Oh, I know. A company that wants you in an upgrade treadmill.
As a senior developer looking at some of the crap code coming out of it, you'd think they hired high school dropouts to code for the language. Just log into MSDN and copy/paste your code. Don't worry about bad code, infinite loops caused by bad pairing of code snippets and lack of knowledge on how an FTP/HTTP server works because you are presented with a high level overview of the task. Talk about efficiency loss by creating 100 HttpWebRequest objects and missuing all of them!
Hell, I even worked with a "developer" that thought he was a Threading genius... then I found out he as trying to set the current threadname to a timestamp and iterating through the thread names and parsing the time out to see if it ran too long... WTF! I guess that's what you get by making the language monkey boy proof.
.net applications run painfully slowly and while the same is true of Java that at least has the advantage of being able to run on any platform while .net only works with Windows. True, .net is great for people who are too lazy or too stupid to program in C++ but the end user has to pay for this simplicity with slow running applications and constant framework updates to install.
As for their development tools being great, it would be nice if they could make the tabs in Visual Studio open in the right order instead of the reverse of every other application in existence.
The only real problems you should have with CLR versions is between 1.1 and 2.0. All versions past 2.0 (3.0, 3.5) run on the 2.0 CLR.
And there are bad programmers in every language out there. (except maybe LISP ;)) I worked in a Java shop for about 6 months and there were good programmers and bad programmers alike. Microsoft's tools really help you get a lot done efficiently and correctly, much moreso than the Java tools I have used. C++ was great in its time, but for most large-scale business applications, it is just difficult to maintain. It's not a very expressive language to say the least. As a language specification, C# is pretty freakin' great. F# looks promising as well, and shows Microsoft is looking ahead to help developers utilize many-core computing.
I guess I could bring up Java floating-point precision problems as well, but that would just be mud-slinging.
I occasionally need to write small apps to help my coworkers and I with menial, repetitive tasks. Without the .Net framework I would be unable to do this. I just don't have the time to dive into C++ or java and learn to be efficient at creating apps with them. In addition, given the software I support I know for certain that the machines I work with will have the 2.0 framework installed.
It's not about laziness or stupidity, you fucking elitists. It's about efficiency. I spend as much time as necessary to fully debug my code and make sure it's running as efficiently as NEEDED. I see the need for unmanaged languages, especially when speed is key, but for a lot of people the .Net framework is an indispensable tool.
Bottom line, I can do things with the .Net framework that I simply wouldn't be able to without it.
Sure, I deal with mini-apps. I code them up in Java or even Flash sometimes. I've even gone as far as creating a static HTML page with javascript on it. I've even done VB work. I don't see how .NET enables this anymore than the others... For complex applications, proper planning and scope evaluation should not be bypassed by a language that is "easy".
No hot chick this post? They were getting better...expected a nude pic.
Engadget's NSFW policy is somewhat better than their commenting system
(@ James, if this does go wrong)
funny that no one has mentioned windows 7... windows seven screen shot with a hot model as background for FHM anyone?
Have i missed something, or are Koreans starting to play Starcraft and WoW in Wine emulators on Linux?
South Koreans are too smart for microsoft. They know full well that windows vista wouldnt run fast on blue gene. That software wouldnt run well if it was renamed micheal johnson. That software wouldnt run well if Intel put out amazing hardware and ATI put out awesome graphics cards and one spent thousands of dollars on them just to run a lousy $50 game. No wonder Gates quit. He's too honest for the vista scam. Long live XP and Linux!!!!!!!!!!
Pass me some of what this guy is smoking.
...
Nevermind, I don't think I'm ready for anything that heavy.
Wouldn't it have spurred more revenue for MS to strike a deal with Blizzard to hand out Starcraft 2 Beta codes with every qualifying purchase of a new Vista PC? :P
I don't understand why Microsoft feels the need to pay South Koreans any money to use their products. Virtually everything, even cash registers, runs on Windows.
Most Korean websites here have ActiveX plugins, making it impossible for me to use a lot of Korean websites with my Mac at home.
The commercials they play on the subways too also run on Windows. I've walked down into the subway a couple times and seen the BSOD instead of the local advertisements.
It's like a drug dealer giving away drugs for free in the beginning...
"I can get you Azure, uh, and Seadragon. What're you into? We've got a Photosynth lab, we can get you tabs of IE8 real cheap, maybe you like Mesh? You a meshhead?"
the slower microsoft makes it crapware, the more copies it sells. Why? Because consumers have to keep upgrading their hardware (and buying new vista licenses with their new systems) just to run the software and all the bloatware that ends up accumulating (including automatic updates, and auto-startup crap that windows cant seem to control)
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, THE SLOWER MICROSOFT MAKES THEIR OS, THE MORE THEY SELL.
My God you've cracked the code. CALL DAN BROWN.
Well well. Who would have thought, Microsoft promoting freeware. Actually, it's worse than freeware, it's product dumping! I wonder if Korea has legislation against this.
The funding of a development centre is nothing special: MS likes throwing money at training developers into exclusive development for their software. It is all an attempt to lock people into a Microsoft way of life, and the group they try to lock in the most are developers (cue Steve Ballmer running about screaming "developers, developers, developers..."). $60 Million is a drop in the bucket for them, they spend ten times more throwing money at schools and training institutes in the US.
The more interesting new is the Memorandum of Understanding that LG has entered into with MS. This agreement is specifically about "Mobile Convergence", and is probably an attempt by MS to lock LG into Windows Mobile. LG is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, so this is most likely a preemptive strike to prevent more Andriod phones from entering the market. MS have already had anti-trust problems in South Korea: I wonder what the South Korean Fair Trade commission and the US DOJ will have to say about this agreement.
They are taking this "never lose a sale to competing, even free" software to entirely new levels.
Not surprised considering it is a country that uses more ActiveX technology than any other country. The banking system is solely based on IE and ActiveX. I don't think the folks over there knows about FireFox or Safari ...
korean DEVELOPERS!
korean DEVELOPERS!
korean DEVELOPERS!
korean DEVELOPERS!!!!!!!!
Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers.
MS just bought all of North Korea's.......they better keep the receipt.
It is a smart move for MS to do this - it's much cheaper than chasing the software pirates and incentivizes illegitimate businesses into doing legal and better quality software...
...just wich MS felt this way about small US developers.
Hey M$, I have been using Windows from over ten years now... How about some cash to me aswell..?!?!?
:D
MS don't care about individual users, but if you say that you're the CTO for a company with over 500 employees and your contemplating Linux, and their sales managers will be swarming you with free stuff.