Pay attention children, you are about to witness yet another self proclaimed industry standard whither into obscurity. This time, it will be the Microsoft Empire. After decades of rape-pillage-and-plunder business practices, the payback has finally started, all it took was a global recession.

Oh, yea of gullible character, it isn’t just a sales slump due to the economy, it is a sales slump because Federal and State governments around the world are now standardizing on the Open Document format. Thus, the once lucrative cash cow of MS Office is being put out to pasture by any company doing business with either. In the current business climate, many who have never done business with either are even making the conversion hoping to grab several handfuls of stimulus dollars while cutting support costs.

Even IBM has seen the drawings on the wall. They have released a pretty serious free word processor based upon some of the OpenOffice project. The IBM release is known as Lotus Symphony. They ship it on various 32-bit Linux platforms, MAC, and even the outgoing Windows platform.

Speaking of outgoing platforms, isn’t it interesting that Microsoft announces a complete dropping of XP in a fraudulent attempt to force Worsta…errr…I mean Vista migration, only to do a complete about face and allow XP to be released on Netbooks? Google, of course, has had a Netbook OS out there for a while, but it hasn’t been viewed as complete as Ubuntu’s Netbook specific version. OpenSuSE has yet to release a Netbook specific version, but I wouldn’t put it past the community. Why the focus on Ubuntu and OpenSuSE? Those are the leaders as far as IBM is concerned. We know this because those are the two Linux platforms with specific Symphony releases.

One of the offshore consulting firms I’ve worked with in the past has even ripped out MS Exchange in favor of GMail. It isn’t just for their own use, they are doing this for clients as well.

I read a lot of people who sound a lot like IBM mainframers at the dawn of the PC age. They couldn’t see a purpose for a computer on a desktop back then. You will read a lot of authors stating they don’t see a future for the Netbook. They would be sadly mistaken. Corporations are looking to cut costs in any way they can. Most of their employees want notebooks. Many are splitting time between home and office. The simple reality is that $300 Netbooks running either OpenSuSE or Ubuntu with Symphony provide what the vast majority of end users need. Mutltiple Web browsers. Xterm provides VT terminal emulation for OpenVMS access. There are also Open Source 3270 terminal emulators included in most bundles. If your email is hosted and works with Mozilla or Opera, the majority of your employees need nothing else.

Today we read about Dell trying to put a brave face on things saying the PC market seems to have found a bottom. You will notice from the way their stock moved, most analysts disagree. The biggest badest notebook one can purchase for under $300 retail is going to define the bottom of the market. While there will be a token few who need more power on their desktop, the days of multi-billion dollar R&D into chips is over. Yes, we’ve got quad core CPUs, but they draw too much power and we don’t have much software which can actually use all four CPUs in any meaningful way. Netbooks appear to have retrenched to nearly the 486 days, but updated the components of that 486 so they are all shiny, new, low power, and tiny.

The testosterone days of “I’ve got more computer than you” are over for everyone that isn’t a gaming addict. You can’t spend money on an OS license or office suite when you are trying to make money in the sub $300 Netbook market.

In less than two years, Microsoft will be reduced in size to that of Corel. In less than five years it will be nothing but a game vendor. Ordinarily this would have taken longer, but a world wide recession has sped it up.

President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors issued a report on the future of the U.S. job market which stated: “Well-trained and highly-skilled workers will be best positioned to secure high-wage jobs, thereby fueling American prosperity.” What they failed to state was that as long as the criminal enterprise of offshoring is allowed to continue unchecked, there will be no high paying jobs left on the American continent. Oh, there will be a handful of those jobs handed down to family members of the Aristocracy, but none that could be had by education and gumption alone.

The policies of the Clinton administration, which went unchecked during the W. Administration have put in motion a two class society or America. The “Have Mores” and the “ Have Nots”. Until there is a $45,000 per head tax placed on companies who either create or maintain a job offshore, either directly as an employee or indirectly via service contract or partnership, there will never be high paying jobs created in this country again. Right now the plug has been pulled out of the drain and we are watching the whirl water gets just before the last of it goes down the drain.

Even after all of the historical evidence, they still keep leaving the same policies in place. The bankruptcy of GM because they and EDS lead the charge in offshoring. The collapse of the housing market, due in large part to the removal of IT workers from the “Flip this House” group. Those of you who need further reminding need to read a previous blog here title “Welcome to the Age of Corruption”.

What is disheartening to see and hear is the fact nobody involved in the economic planning and advising has taken it upon themselves to fix the one thing which will fix most everything else, stopping the whirl down the drain. Perhaps one could cut the administration some slack with the old adage “when you’re up to your ass in alligators it is hard to remember your objective was to drain the swamp.” Well, you need to pay for all of your programs President Obama. One of the best ways to pay for that is to charge the $45,000 per head tax on offshore jobs created or maintained either directly or indirectly. The fastes way to bring those jobs back is to remove the economic viability. There is no reason to fund college education when the very jobs the graduate will be qualified to hold have all left the country.