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"It's like if Balmer dragged a programmer up on stage and proceeded to flog the crap out of him for ruining something in the windows kernel -- people would be all over what a horrible platform Windows is to develop for and what a horrible company Microsoft is."

First of all, that ship has sailed already (i.e. WIndows as a horrible OS and M$ as a horrible company.) Are you claiming that Balmer throwing a chair and swearing his A$$ off at a competitor like a jealous child while continuing to accept garbage code from his M$ developers is fine, but Linus can't be harsh over actual piss poor development? Don't worry too much that less people might pay to use the Linux kernel now. In case nobody told you, it is already free as in beer as well as free as in speech.

Microsoft isn't about money and they never have been. They're about control. If they have control they can demand money and their "customers" have little choice but to pay. Oracle works the same way though frankly Oracle's mind bending powers are even more inexplicable. Oracle must have hired the same guys who designed the sales pitch for Encyclopedia Brittanica - that was an amazing pitch.

Microsoft going from 90% control of everything in IT including mobile to 33% of everything including mobile is a significant loss of control. Losing also every whit of influence in mobile - the only growth sector - at the same time is an even bigger deal. Microsoft can't go to carrier CEOs today and say "we might let you carry our Windows Phone devices if you suck up to us enough" like they could do when Windows Mobile was nearly 40% of smart devices and mobile smart devices were a tiny fraction of PCs. Verizon - the largest US provider - pushed the KIN and they are since reluctant. Now they have to petition the secretary of the secretary of the guy who adds phones for a carrier to set a meeting to discuss potential partnerships, and they have to bring the green suitcase or they won't even make it past security even with an appointment.

Google knew this when they bought Android for $50 million. They've gotten good value from this weapon in their war for survival, gaining so much control of mobile as it has grown larger than PCs that they provide the software for all of half of all the devices sold. For comparison Microsoft has spent about $16 billion on their Online Services Division (320x as much) since Steve Ballmer swore he was going to "fucking kill Google" (sorry for the language, but it's in the court document) in the legendary chair-throwing incident to no effect whatsoever. Actually to negative effect since Windows Mobile was doing far better without help. That's a lot to spend on a grudge and get less than nothing back. The Google guys aren't just out-thinking them, they're proving to have far more foresight also - probably a result in them being fully engaged in innovating rather than surviving their Survivor: Redmond working conditions. Or maybe because by being a challenger, Google must strive.

It's been never since Microsoft had to earn their market share. They lucked into it with a shaky deal with IBM on day 1, and leveraged that control since. Not only do they not know how to earn it - they never have known. Microsoft has always worked from a position of power and used that dominant position to take whatever they wanted from technology businesses. They will continue to work as if they're working from a position of power even when they're not in one because they don't know any other way. They don't know how to earn it because they've never had to. Obviously believing you have immense power and acting on that when you don't is an illness called "megalomania" - a psychosis they are unlikely to be cured of without long confinement in a straightjacket. By the time they're healed and sane again it will likely be too late for the shareholders.

Such is always the way with dominant companies: pride goeth before a fall. There's a long list of companies who fell this way in mobile: Palm, RIM, Nokia are but a few. Empires end eventually and it's starting to look like Microsoft's day in the sun is over. The decline will be long and slow as they have many fully committed acolytes - some in the highest levels of governments the world over - but eventually change must come. As humans we crave progress, and progress is antithesis to monopoly.

http://tinypic.com/r/k99ctw/6

Here is a man who's rage problems are so great and leadership problems suck so much he resembles a movie villian. Teslee from tank girl to be exact. Every last anarchist's hideous stereotypical depiction of "capitalist" leadership.

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2005/09/ballmer_throws_a_chair_at_fing_google.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aQ6W2nFlN8

This is a distraction to get media focus back on Twitter because of the Google search plus announcement. Honestly Twitter shows me the Fail Whale about once a week and their service record is poor for such a large site - so what will they be complaining about next?

Google has been amassing tons of data and is now planning to use that to have personalized search - that is the story. I don't see how they will get around the filter bubble issue. (Never mind personal data protection and other issues.)

As a side I am still trying to wrap my head around Wolfram's blog today about using a TLD .data in relation to the Google announcement.

Bad day for the internet?

I am surprised it didn't hit Twitfail

John Battelle

But that wasn't it.

It was more like "this report can't be right because it contradicts all other available data"

Which is anything but illogical.

When Steve Balmer says "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." we are not supposed to believe this is an actual threat, but when he says "we won't sue you", we're supposed to believe he's telling the literal truth?

But apparently Ballmer, who is rarely at a loss for words, didn't exactly have a sound byte at the ready.

This journalist is a true newbie in this field. Haven't he heard what happened when Ballmer loss for words last time? He expressed his gentle feeling with body language.

It's not a sound byte he was not ready, it's a chair.

Seriousy: such indecision is an indication of failing management. OK: we all change our minds when something unforeseen becomes apparent, but if this happens too often you need to start to ask questions why these things were not discussed in advance. It is likely that you have lackeys at various levels of management who are more interested in ass licking (keeping their boss happy) than doing their job properly and, occasionally, pointing out to the boss that their decision might be wrong. Read at the bottom on the story, there is a link to more major & minor issues where they have changed their minds.

Well... just to name a few:

• Anyone watching which companies are growing during the recession
• Anyone looking at how the latest high-volume services are building infrastructure on the Web
• Neil Gaiman
• Demi Moore
• The President of the United States (though to be fair, his status isn't updated recently
• Al Gore
• John McCain (currently updating from Hong Kong)
• John Battelle, whose insights about the search industry are often enlightening

This, of course, does not make Twitter a panacea, but it certainly makes it interesting enough to warrant the occasional Slashdot article.

Wrong chair thrower, my friend. I believe he was talking about Steve Ballmer.

Google is such a terrible company. They go around pretending to be the good guys by helping open source projects, promoting an open-source browser, developing an open source browser and supporting webkit, pushing standardization and inter-communication between chat clients. pushing for the use of free (as in beer) software. It clearly won't be long before we were wishing Microsoft was back and those rat-bastards at Google had never touched the web!

There may be some Slashdot readers who don't know the story about the chair: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".

Quotes:

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." ....

Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."

Quoted from legal papers in a court case brought by Microsoft.

Godzilla may have thrown chairs, but he didn't have such a potty mouth: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".

"No fixation, no envy -- just business as usual." We know what Steve Ballmer thinks of Google: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".

Quotes:

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." ....

Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."

Maybe not fixation, maybe not envy, but SOME kind of mental illness.

The comment above is referring to this: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google". (Taken from a court document in a legal case started by Microsoft.)

I'm 110% with you. I've been begging for this and have emailed both Netflix and TiVo to that effect, but apparently it ain't gonna happen.

I don't want another box, another input/output to hassle with, more cables behind my tv, another remote, another stupid UI to deal with, etc. I like my TiVo, and I like the UI. I like that Netflix has a huge selection - typical movies to now canceled shows. I had a Netflix subscription to catch up on episodes of Farscape when a friend introduced me to the show in the middle of season two and I had no idea wth was going on. So put the two things together -- this seems obvious to everyone but the idiots who handle so-called "content licensing". If they would get their heads out of their collective ass, they could make money from people like me, because I would pay to download content to my TiVo.

I don't like Amazon Unbox, honestly. Titles are hard to find, and most random things I look for seem to be not found or unavailable - or are only available to "purchase" or "rent to your PC". Dumb. I assume the TiVo deal with Amazon is some kind of exclusive contract that prevents TiVo from even talking to Netflix. TiVo, from my perspective as a customer/consumer, has done a lot of things right. This is not one of them.

Perhaps they didn't want anyone to throw them?

Yes, it's blatant karma-whoring (hence the AC). But there are apparently a bunch of morons reading slashdot any more, rather than clever hackers. Someone needed to hit them with the clue-bat.

I'm not certain as I am still kinda new here...

You must be new... Ah, yes you've already admitted that. The GP (that means 'grandparent post' in /. speak) was being silly, although this is a prime example of 'never a truer word spoken in jest.' Most people on /. find it very difficult to admit when they're wrong, that's why that post has been modded-up: 'funny'.

There are a number of other things you should know about /. particularly all the in-jokes: Natalie Portman, hot grits, in Soviet Russia, Steve Ballmer's chair fixation the list goes on. If you don't understand one of these, don't ask, you'll probably get modded-down, the maxim here is: 'Just fucking Google it.'

Another thing: you may note that I am posting as 'Anonymous Coward', this is because I am a 'Karma whore' (a concept you will soon become familiar with). I cannot post as my normal account because this post will probably be--rightfully--modded 'offtopic' and that would damage my karma. So welcome to /. ! Hope you enjoy your time here, mind out for trolls, and may your karma be as great as your intellect.

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." ....

Sworn testimony.

Except for the fact that they really suck...

Doesn't this violate the Sherman Antitrust Act: where a monopoly cannot use their market power (IE: existing customer base) to extend into other fields / markets.

If cross-subsidies from monopoly to competitive markets are considered potentially anticompetitive, a rule against mixed bundling should be based not on a comparison of price and cost, but on the market power in the bundled-product markets. The less likely it is that A is earning monopoly profits in the market for one bundled product, the less concern there is that a mixed bundle could have anticompetitive effects.

There's a decentralised RDF-based "Semantic Web"-type version in the form of FOAF. You can already browse it with software like FOAFnaut etc, and generate your own FOAF file with FOAF-a-matic. There was a crawler called Plink, but that seems to be dead now.

Maybe because these are not so much rants, as someone putting their foot down. Hey, at least he is not throwing chairs.

John Battelle interviewed EFF's Fred von Lohmann, asking him about YouTube's legal issue and Google's role in it.

So I think the YouTube acquisition may well represent a legal opportunity for Google (and the Internet industry generally), rather than a vulnerability. After all, litigation to define the copyright rules for new online services are inevitable -- better to choose your battles and plan for them, rather than fleeing the fight and letting some other company create bad precedents that will haunt you later.

>Until it can automatically subtitle in seven different languages...

Just wait till Google launches audio search based on speech recognition and combine it with their Machine Translation stuff to give you magic insta-subtitles. If they aren't working at least on the first part of this I''d be very dissapointed (or buy someone like Nexidia http://battellemedia.com/archives/002286.php)

Here is how search engine shares and growth compare over the last few quarters: chart. Doesn't look peachy for Ask.

On 3-way iChat: Ballmer: Screw you both! I'm goint to F*ing kill Google!

no, a chair.

Now Slashdot published this article, It seens my article was rejected, so Im posting it here:

It's on the news and in other news.com, spotlighted by Google's refusal on providing search query history, that search engines may
have been collecting more than reasonable information about you, and without your permission (BTW I call my disabled cookie a explicit denial).

So I'd like to know from you, paranoic fellow: How do you protect yourself from search engines?

Besides not allowing cookies, I don't use search engines that use redirect and I block addresses already know to collect personal information as a business. But now I think it's time to step further, par to their insistence on collecting, or trying to figure, information that I explicit denied.

FYI I don't like proxies, first because a lot of them are maintened by people that instead are logging your connection, secondly because it's necessary just one bad guy using a public proxy to justice provide a warrant to log all the communication on that proxy, either from bad or good guys. And, it's not just my IP, it's also the other information that Google, for example, says to associate: date, search query, browser/OS, lang and cookies. I really want to confuse those bastards. If those SEOs morons can be sucessuful don't letting me find useful results on $valuable$ queries why we can't be in enforcing our privacy?

Since most of that information in provided by the browser I would seek for a Firefox Extension or a local hosted frontend. For further elaboration: every search would be followed by a flood of fake requests (different sources IPs) but with a fixed pattern (the query you want and a faked Browser/OS), if the information is likely to be false it has no value; every different query would be sent to a different server, Google for example have hundreds of servers world wide, bypass their nameserver and use a different server on every search, one pattern less and the problem to sync your searches on their side; improve bookmark/history search, to avoid searching again what you already did; other suggestions? And more important: the solutions?

The Author's name is: John Battelle. His site is:

http://battellemedia.com/

The GP was refereing to Steve Ballmer tossing a Chair in his office http://battellemedia.com/archives/001835.php

About OpenOffice.org.
According to this:

I spoke to Marissa Mayer about Pack, and she had some fun stuff to say about it. I noticed no version of Open Office in the Pack, and she reminded me this is just the first version of the Pack, and since it updates itself automatically, why, there might be Open Office in an update shortly. They are in active discussions, I was told.

Talking about Google's rules are the "Don't be evil mantra", check out the Google & Kozoru story. Don't be evil, yeah right!

I wonder how you can completely ignore the fact that Google is supporting censorship in china. Yes, they are a company so seeking profits, but since the IPO, the "6. You can make money without doing evil." might have changed a *little* bit.

Going through browser history on your disk is old news. The interesting question here is, what happens when they want something that is not on your disk? The A9 toolbar does log your history - on the server side. You can turn this off, of course, but if you don't, A9 has that information, and it can be subpoenaed by law enforcement. Even this is old news to an extent - law enforcement does routinely subpoena ISPs and email providers to root through suspected criminals' email (including Gmail accounts). Just go read some indictments against (formerly) l33t h4x0rz and piracy rings.

What is this about Steve and chairs....I have seen it everywhere lately, and I don't get it

It's because of this

Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google"

Actually, this came up in a fark PS contest some time ago... Now that'd be neat!

I haven't been able to locate the official legal document that this supposedly came from, but the guy runningthis blog apparently has and quotes the line.

A better link from digg is here.

An original blog entry...
http://battellemedia.com/archives/001835.php

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." ....

Google isn't going to do anything of the sort, because Steve Ballmer is going to fucking kill them first!

That is a very interesting, because the _main_ eBay search guy, Louis Monier (also the guy behind AltaVista technology), just announced he is leaving eBay and going to Google:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/001653.php

>Yes, but a company can make a tonne of money and still not be evil. They two things are not mutually exclusive.

Google this:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/000919.php

And this:
--------------
Google is one of the most popular search engines for users worldwide. Google's cache function, though, allows users to access (at least intermittently) filtered content, because the request for that material goes to Google's servers, not to the blocked source's servers.168 Concerned by this circumvention method, China temporarily blocked access to Google in September 2002169; requests for Google's site were redirected to Chinese search engines.170 According to the company, Google negotiated with Chinese officials, and eventually access was restored.171

However, we found that while Google's site is accessible to Chinese users,172 the Google cache173 and certain keyword searches are blocked.
--------------
Source:
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/#to c4

if everyone were to agree on a tag set and apply it consistently, and tag everything of possible business interest, then yes, WebFountain would not be so relevant...and people would also need to tag for things that they don't even know will be businesses in 50 years [...] We'll see if that pans out!

I believe it was stated on John Battelle's weblog that search is the center of gravity for the computer industry .

I believe it was stated on John Battelle's weblog that search is the center of gravity for the computer industry .