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Microsoft: Because Bugs are Cool
h_orion writes "According to Mr. Gates, Microsoft recieves 'Less than one percent' call volume in relation to bugs. He also blames the users lack of knowledge as a cause of some of these bugs. He goes on to say that the feeling of frustration that people hold towards bugs is a sociological issue, rather than technical saying that people complain about software bugs 'Because it's cool.' Read more in this interview." Boy, where do you even begin...
Although the MS Knowledge base is good a resolving lots of questions/bugs I wish it were more like Bugzilla....
With that mentality, McDonalds will be next at saying people complain about tainted food, "because it's cool"....
hmmm... I never quite got the "coolness" factor of praying to the porciline god...
Its actually hard to believe this interview is real. Actually is there any proof that it is? Gates sounded very unprofessional and not like himself in the interview, almost like he was attacking the FOCUS interviewer. Anyone else care to comment on this?
October 23,1995? This is a really old interview. It is nice and old. /. History for Nerds. Stuff that mattered. Hmm. At this point, it is difficult to even verify if this interview is even real...
-Sean
Nobody demanding to see the original transcript?
No, those links at the bottom don't lead to the original transcript, only some German "analysis" of the original transcript.
Because of this blatant lack of evidence, everything else is suspect.
I have been pwned because my
that people complain about software bugs 'Because it's cool.'
That's why they create so many of them. It's all for the customers.
Funny, I used to get lots of letters from irate fanboys who asserted that it was an obvious fake. Not one of them could spell.
Does this interview sound fake to anyone else? I mean, come on:
Gates:
No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?
FOCUS:
Yeah, I did...
Gates:
It turns out Luddites don't know how to use software properly, so you should look into that.
---
Gates:
No, only if that is what'll sell!
Gates is a businessman - I don't think he'd be stupid enough to say this kind of stuff in an interview. I want to see the original source documents.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Doesn't Microsoft only receive a small number of bug-related calls because they charge for telephone support?
Windows crashing is simply a power saving feature. It is your computer's way of telling you that you should be shutting your computer off at night.
Just like the blue screen of death is really the blue screen of rest. Bill Gates thought it would be usefull to force people to take breaks after doing lots of work. Haven't you noticed that your computer is much more likely to freeze when you just finished typing 30 pages of text (without backup of course) than after you just finished your first page.
Where did this article come from?
Can anyone vouch for the veracity of the comments in it?
Did the interview really take place?
Did the interview take place at a time and in an environment that would have an effect on today?
If you just want to blindly start swinging because it's Bill Gates, then fine, do your swinging. But if you want to join the world of grownups, maybe it would be useful to think critically.
I have been pwned because my
How did this even get posted? It's obviously complete satire. Click here to see all of the websites that link to this...they're all TECH HUMOR. If humor was the intended goal, it'd be responsible to make note of that in the summary. Please correct this in the dupe.
Lack of user knowledge (or even the ability to infer) is a common problem in regards to bugs and other tech support related issues.
I do tech support for a local ISP and some of the calls we get are ridiculous.
Me:Okay, Click next. (On 7th screen of 'Internet Connection Wizard')
User: Alright, now it wants my username and passowrd.
Me: Type them in the appropriate blanks. Make sure password is case-sensitive.
User: I thought it was qwExEjv?
Me: Pardon me?
Later...
Me: What do you see now? (1235th screen of 'ICW')
User: The same thing as I did before, nothing has changed. Is this thing broken? Are you sure you're doing this right?
Me: You see the exact same thing? (perplexed)
User: YES.
Me: Oh. Click Next please.
User: Oh, you didn't say to click next.
I mean COME ON
Posting as directed.
How do
This link is not even on FOCUS magazine's website
This post fooled you all
The interview link in the post is on The Cantrip Corpus
website
cantrip: (kän tRip), n. (Chiefly Scot.)
1. a magical charm or enchantment; 2. an elaborate deception or prank.
corpus: (kôr pus), n., pl. -pora,
1. a complete set of writings; 2. a dead body.
Date + Style of the interview point to it being old and/or fake. Take your pick and either way it is a nice piece of history and little more.
Secondly, I'll bet from looking purely at support calls, he's correct. How many people are you aware of that are willing to spend money to be told "yep, that's a bug"? When Word just disappears altogether, how many people think "hmm - I'll call MS and tell them about it" and instead just throw up their hands in dismay, mutter ... something, reboot, and try again? Not that this is anything against your post - yeah, MS software is known to be buggy. But I'll bet that the metrics Bill was talking about were correct - and completely misleading.
However, what Bill was really trying to do was argue that when Microsoft releases a new version of one of their products (Word was the example given), they are not releasing a for-pay patch. They are releasing software that contains more and better features! At least, that's his argument. The whole point of his argument was not that MS software does not contain bugs - is what that new releases aren't just expensive patches.
Whether you agree or not...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
That is 8 years ago. 8 years ago Microsoft was positively pleasant compared with current behaviour.
So who cares what Bill said (or maybe didn't say) back then?
"Cats like plain crisps"
Indeed.
Never mind that this article is from 1995 -- the Slashdot summary is incorrect. Bill isn't saying that Microsoft never fixes bugs. He says, "We don't do a new version to fix bugs. ... We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis." [Emphasis added.] This doesn't mean that Microsoft never fixes bugs, or that Bill doesn't think bugfixes are important. He's saying that a product can't be sold on bugfixes alone.
And he's probably right. Consider Apple's release of Mac OS X 10.2. They charged people who already had 10.1. Those people complained pretty loudly about being charged for a "point-one" upgrade, and that was bugfixes and a feature release. Guess how much Apple's "point-oh-one" updates cost? Nothing.
If you try to charge people for upgrades that only contain bugfixes, you will either be ignored or yelled at.
irb(main):001:0>
1. Me: Turn on your computer and when it is finished loading wait about ten seconds
Her: How long is ten seconds?
2. Me: Enter your 10 digit customer id (supposed to enter into box on screen).. i then hear him entering the 10 digits into the telephone
3. Me: What version of Windows do you have?
Her: What's Windows?
Me: You know, Microsoft Windows. What version of the operating system do you have?
Her: I've never heard of Windows
4. Me: Put the floppy disc into the drive
Him: Ok, let me open it noises...noises..noises
Him: This disc is round but the slot is a rectangle. I don't think it will fit.
Me: Um, did you actually take apart the floppy disc and remove it from its shell?
Him: Oh, yeah, was I not supposed to do that?
Above stories are all true and have happend within the last three months. Ah the joy of college part-time jobs as tech support.
Face it, whining about minor bugs is now become an art form.
Complaining about bugs may or may not be cool, but complaining about people complaining about bugs becuase it's cool is not cool. I know that I am complaining about someone complaining about people complaining about bugs and I may not be cool, but it would be cool if there were less bugs and people didn't complain about bugs and people didn't complain about people complaining about bugs being cool.
Does your code read like this? Then it's probably got bugs. And that's not cool.
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Gates has been known to attack interviewers in the past. In recent years he has been trying to clean up his image a bit and not seem like the huge ass hole that he really is. I think Gates is so insulated from the real world that he suffers from Michael Jackson syndrome, where he is able to create his own reality. When he is confronted with the truth he becomes defensive.
Atomic bomb ends war with Japan!
Slashdot editors discover that they can avoid duplicates by posting stories that predate slashdot!
Look at the date; this is an eight year old article that, for some reason, was posted to the front page of Slashdot...
Anyway, a couple points:
- I think there was some mis-communication. Gates is right -- nobody buys a new version to fix bugs. You might download an updated point release (or service pack or whatever) to fix bugs. But you don't often go from Office 97 to 2000 over some minor irritations.
- I actually believe the bug report percentage in relation to their phone call volume. When's the last time you called a software company to report a bug? When is the last time you discovered a truly unique bug in a major piece of software that you were sure wasn't known about?
And as someone else mentioned, most of their calls are along the lines of "how do I turn my computer on?" or "I upgraded MSN and it broke my inner-net"
So, basically, it's a poor article from 8 years ago. Slow news day...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
This, I think, is the key:
"We don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say 'Would you buy a new version because of bugs?' You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs."
No matter how much we SAY we hate software bugs, we still go out and buy software that we know probably contains them. And we are not really that willing to pay for bug fixes. Not because they "should be free" - we already paid for the software, so there is no reason for the vendor to put effort into releasing fixes (unless we're on a support contract or something). If we software consumers really want to make a point that bugs will not be tolerated, then we have to STOP paying for buggy software. And if we still hand over the cash, with full knowledge of potential bugs, then by the economic principle of revealed preference, the vendor is right - it's not worth it to fix bugs.
Here goes the Karma...
Doesn't anybody here ever use any Borland software? You'd start thinking Microsoft had a top notch QA department. Try just about anything from Borland, but I'd say Paradox (that goes back a few years now) was the very worst. Then there's C++ builder. Pick your version. We're talking about a level and inconsistency here that would make you beg for a daily BSOD. In fact they have a bug that has been on the known bug list for 3 or 4 YEARS now, and they claim they CAN'T fix it. Ha! That's just the one I know about.
But do we ever hear a word about it around here? No.
How about the horror stories about Apple's previous OS constantly locking and crashing? Do we hear about those? No.
But we sure do hear about the BSOD, even though Win2K is plenty solid enough for your average desktop computer user, myself included. The version known for frequent BSOD'S (and boy was it bad) is three years in the past folks!
But at least it's entertaining to watch people sit around and mindlessy bash MS. Bill's right I guess. Bitching about bugs really is cool.
I really like to rake B.G. over the coals and such, just look at my sig, but that just doesn't sound like Bill Gates to me. Bill Gates is much smoother, in this interview he sounded all most spitefull. If that was B.G. I wonder what kind of abuse he endured to get himself to the point where he came accrost so testy. B.G. has been interviewed enough so that he'd know how to say those things but make them sound nice.
B.G and Microsoft et. al. maybe the evil coporate Satan incarnate, but you'd never know it from talking to them. My hookey meter is off the scale on this one. ( Sheesh I'm defending Bill Gates, who da thunk)
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