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Ballmer Sends Wakeup Call to Staff
Puneet writes "An MSNBC article outlines details of how the world's biggest software company seems to be facing a technology gap. Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, sent a memo across the company basically saying that with no immediate breakthroughs in technology coming, and with the Linux computer operating system and a batch of other open-source programs biting at its heels, Microsoft will have to do a better job of persuading customers it has something they need.
. Microsoft must "improve business consistency" so that customers are not hit with unexpected - and unwanted - changes. Also covered by Forbes but in lesser detail."
Microsoft will have to do a better job of persuading customers it has something they need
sounds like a few tobacco companies I know....
"get 'em hooked young, then they'll never stop!"
I'm sure if Microsoft could nicotine to a product, they would.
Mike
To back up this new push to promote a more customer-friendly Microsoft, Ballmer promised that the company would âoeincrease our advertising budget significantly for all our audiences.â
This pretty much sums it up.
An equal headline and probably more accurate one would be "MS launches new media campaign to portray company as customer-friendly".
All marketing, no real changes.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You known, Perception Is Reality.
Is this connected with .NET failing to deliver its promises and the fact that Smartphone idea met stronger resistance from cellphones vendors (especially Nokia) than MS expected?
These two were - arguably - two biggest things MS pushed in last two years. Does that memo mean they don't have anything else up their sleeve? What then with all the money spent and effort at "Microsoft Labs"?
...all of a sudden that iLoo isn't looking like such a bad idea...
If Microsoft emails keep leaking like this, it is about time they came up with a "Trustworthy employee" program before the "trustworthy computing" initiative.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
More than anything, Microsoft has really hurt itself through it's new licensing plan -- and this with a competitor who offers an initial software cost of zero. That defies market logic -- to raise your prices when faced by a seemingly lower cost competitor. It almost forces the hands of IT engineers (who already face much tighter budgets) to consider open source solutions instead of Microsoft when they need an implementation of, say, an extra file and print server to hold all of the new graphics files generated by the marketing department.
At the end of the day, it is money that makes the corporation go 'round. And, if I can offer my management and users a better solution that costs less money, it is in my absolute best interests to do so.
First he identifies a problem - Microsoft has no new and innovative ideas for improving their products.
Then he comes up with the perfect solution - "improve business consistency!" The best way we can serve our customers is by not introducing any new and innovative ideas to improve our products!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Knowing the "mess" they're in and fixing it has always been one of their strong suits. When they released Windows 3.x and found lukewarm support by WordPerfect and Lotus, they admitted it and took a course of action to correct it. When they realized they were too late in jumping on the Internet bandwagon, they admitted it and started development on a browser to compete with Netscape. Now, they realize that they are falling behind in the security and "features people need" area and will most certainly strive to correct the situation. So, don't just sit back, point your finger, and laugh; take a good look within the open source world and see what needs fixing.
This could be the announcement of a new dotcomboom :
:-)
The bigggest software company of the world just admits being stalled.
It's high time small development structures came with new things in order to convince the investors to empty their pockets.
Now, if we consider Microsoft's usual tendency to buy interesting startups, then the above-mentioned investors will for sure be there to re-sell them their shares.
Or, of course, I could be dreaming but I hope not : I have some nice new software concepts for sale
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The technically superior part is not neccessarily important to a company like MS.
They care about products that are driven by what consumers want. In the past they have dictated what consumers want or need, but now they just have to sit up and listen.
I know more people that do not care about computer security as much as they do bells and whistles. These are the people MS want.
Ah! Competition. Don't you just love it?
Monopoly kills the incentive(s) to innovate. Since 'we' are the biggest why should we change? That's why many contries, including the US, have anti-monopoly laws. Somehow Microsoft managed to circumvent these laws. (I wonder why?) And now that the monopoly is slightly fading (it's not gone by a long shot), Microsoft is realizing that if they want to survive they need to innovate.
Let's see how the big M will be doing in the real world.
I think it's odd the article doesn't mention apple. Sure GNU/Linux is the most immediate server threat, but apple is more likely to threaten the desktop. Also, no mention of software solutions threat (IBM, etc).
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
I think that basing your model on purely technological mindset is not really the way to go - sure, technology drives the computer industry, however I believe we're moving to a more fundamental factor in choosing Information Technology:- Lifestyle.
This is what Apple has moved to as their model - sure they provide technological goodies, but the aim is improving lifestyle, not technology for the sake of technology/innovation.
Consider the strategy of providing Music/Movie/Image/Organiser products - Lifestyle products.
Consumers have been fed a steady diet of new gizmo's and gadgets but it takes many years for them to actually *GET* what they can do with them.
Bluetooth is such an example - been around for years, but only now am I using it (the technology) because I need to synchronise my Address Book and Calendar (Lifestyle).
I believe that the industry will gain momentum over the next few years by not plugging a particula technology but marketing Lifestyle Devices/Software using new technology in innovative ways...
-- Dan =)
Note particularly:
1980: Bell Labs finally shows interest in BSD Unix
-and-
1991: 05Oct: linux 0.02, first mention of directory-name 'linux' on netnews
The only real advantage that MS has over *nix/BSD is its' easy of use. Don't get me wrong I love *nix/BSD but would I install it on my parents computer or even my non-techie friends computers ... I don't think so. , however they are quickly losing their lead in this area as the other OSes mature.
... who knows soon they may have to realease a *nix version of MS Office just to stay competative ... that will be the day ;)
Maybe this will force MS to write some quality software
We don't need no stinking sig!
"Longhorn will come when we think itâ(TM)s really ready.
you have to wonder whether he thinks some of the changes are too extreme and possibly of little value to the user.
__
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When I first got into computers around 94-95ish, it seemed like once a week a new technology or use for current technology was being created...
....then once every couple of months... ...and now maybe once a year at best..
then once a month...
And when I think about it, it all seems to coincide with the increase in lawsuits against "patent violators", the DMCA, "intelectual property violations", etc etc. Basically, the big guys are stomping the little guy if he thinks outside the box, and it happens to present a challenge to their technology.
Perhaps Microsoft needs to wake up to this big tech killmachine that they have had a hand it making, and try to reverse some of the damage that it has done. Now people are afraid to issue security warnings for fear they might be arrested for breaking the DMCA...
insane...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Smartphone sucks all right, but
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
With all OS development concentrated on Longhorn, which is several years down the road, they can't hardly do anything else. They have no new products to present to the consumer, so they have decided to hype up Longhorn instead.
Now, with Mac OS X and several free operating systems doing being able to do jsut about anything you can do with windows, companies are beginning to realise the alternatives. Managers have references of successful OSS-implementations in Office settings, and are willing to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine which suits their needs, instead of merely scoffing at OSS on the desktop.
Their mudslinging campaign agains OSS hasn't proved to be the success they thought it would be, and more draconian licensing schemes are making customers re-evaluate their need for Microsoft Products.
Notice, how I'm not talking about Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack will be happy to use whatever his machine comes with, as long as it does what he wants it to do. When computer manufacturers stop delivering OEM installations of Windows, we can talk about a level playing field where each OS will be judged on its own merits.
"What's this? OS X for x86? Let's just start a rumor we're dropping Office for Mac..."
The one thing that Microsoft Windows beats back Linux in every time is compatability. Take the rescent Neverwinter Nights fiasco. It took Bioware forever to choose a platform to handle the graphics and even longer to choose one to handle the sound. With Windows, it's DirectX all the way. Also, until I can have an OS install on my computer that is as easy as 'pop in the disk, turn the thing on, choose a few simple options, then sit back and wait until its done', Windows will still have an advantage over Linux in the installer department. I was impressed with the RedHat 9 installer, which was able to find and detect enough of my USB devices on install that I didn't have to break out my PS2 mouse / keyboard, but then again, Windows has been doing that for years (since at least Windows 2k).
Linux does have many advantages over Windows, but to say that Linux and all of its branches are technically superior in pretty much every way is a bit over stepping your bounds there.
Granted, this post will never see the light of day as wave after wave of linux zealots launch a 'He supported MICROS~1 so we have to mod him down' Jihad against me
Have you hugged your penguin today?
The new licensing is part of MS's 'Make Sure People Stop Using Our Stuff' strategy.
This strategy will, it is hoped, cut costs by up to 100%.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Notice that the single significant tangible move is to increase advertising budgets?
Good luck, Steve-o.
I'm afraid you're facing a stealth advertising campaign that's hard to buck -- the very same one your company rode to the top in the early 80s.
It's the "I can't get signoff to buy the stuff I need, but I can put this together on my own authority and put it into place" ad, the "What do you mean we're already using it? Get it out now. What? We're doing THAT with it? Hmm. OK, maybe just this once" kind of advertising.
Microsoft knows the power of that publicity very well. It's what led PCs to prominence and the power of IT (Whoops! It was MIS back then) staffs to shrink.
First, Microsoft should dump all money losing divisions. As I'm sure everyone here has heard, Microsoft's OSes and Office products generate over 80% profits, which the company uses to fund losers such as WebTV, MSN, the Xbox, etc.
By dumping those loses, Microsoft could drastically drop prices AND continue making the same profits. I'd be a win-win situation.
Second, drop product activation. No one likes being treated like a criminal. And as I've written here before, product activation does NOT stop real piracy, i.e., piracy for profit. The ISO for XP Professional was readily available and instructions for installing SP1 were easy to follow via tweaktown.com's instructions. Simply put, pirates were still able to copy and sell XP Pro without ANY impediment.
The real purpose of product activation is to stop friends and family from sharing copies. If Microsoft's software was lower in price, (see my first point) people would simply buy their own copy.
Third, stop the egregious software assurance type deals that only serve to piss off your customers. If you really want Linux to fail, stop giving your customers a reason to use it!
Fourth, stop with those outrageous deals to stop Linux. You know the ones, when India, China, or Germany wants to switch to open source, Microsoft bends over backwards to give practically free software. This totally pisses off customers paying way too much via software the draconian deals imposed in my third point. Secondly, it gives them an incentive to look into switching to Linux.
Fifth, stop using the BSA police to force deals. When public schools canâ(TM)t afford your software, donâ(TM)t send the police force a deal. When I didnâ(TM)t buy a GM car, they were kind enough NOT to send the police to check out my garage. We expect the same courtesy from Microsoft!
Sixth, I could go on and on and on. But since my boss expects me to work for money, Iâ(TM)ll quit here and let others post some suggestions.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The issue for Microsoft is that to keep their stock prices high, they've got to show continually rising sales.
.NET - next big thing....
But they're not going to convince anyone to switch to MS product at this point...everybody already runs a MS OS or MS Office, so there's no growth there. The market has matured.
The server market has slow turnover, and growth will come slowly there (if at all).
I see them doing two things:
1) Putting license key schemes in place on their OS's, this will get a marginal revenue increase by eliminating the bulk of casual piracy for the OS
2) I imagine the same thing will happen with MS Office soon
3) Hope to god the console business takes off...
4) Come up with a DRM scheme and convince the record companies and users its a good thing. Unfortunately, they don't have a good reputation as a strategic partner.
5)
6) Palladium - next big thing....
I mean, Ballmer's right, there's nothing there that will mean a big revenue increase for MS; its just a lot of nibble around the edges.
Frankly, MS would have been better off splitting into an application company and an OS company; each individual company would be forced to innovate and take chances. But as they are now, MS is a very very conservative company, and that's not going to lead them to any big breakthroughs.
They are equal to IBM in 1975.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The article says that Ballmer plans to "increase our advertising budget significantly for all our audiences". Does anyone else see that as treating the symptom rather than the disease? The point of the article was that Microsoft doesn't seem to have anything to persuade people to buy its products, so instead of INNOVATING, they're going to "persuade" people that they need Microsoft. The problem isn't that people don't need Microsoft, the problem is that Microsoft isn't creating anything new and exciting in the computer world... and increasing the advertising budget by all the money in Fort Knox isn't going to change that.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
There are several important differences between how
The one thing that Microsoft Windows beats back Linux in every time is compatability... With Windows, it's DirectX all the way.
Well, or OpenGL for those little indie games like Quake III or Doom III.
Ballmer is well known for blowing a lot of hot air, so it's often hard to know What Exactly He's Really Saying.
My translation is that he's saying Microsoft is appearing to reach either an upper asymptote or a maximum (with decreases to follow) in terms of company growth, revenue, etc.
I'm inclined to believe this translation based on his recent failure in Munich to stave off a large scale Linux desktop deployment and on his large sale of MSFT stock "to diversify his portfolio".
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Microsoft must âoeimprove business consistencyâ
The best way to improve "business consistency" is to stop upgrading your Microsoft products. Just keep them the same.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Don't you find it ironic that the worldâ(TM)s biggest software company got there not by innovation but rather by other means, and now they're bemoaning that very fact? They started off by buying OS code and licensing their way into most computers built. As their warchest grew and grew, they simply swallowed up other innovative companies or put innovative companies perceived as a threat to their death.
This company was never based on customer service and now they want to be perceived that way? It's going to be quite tough for this large company to change the corporate culture that has run deep in its veins since the beginning of its existence, if it's even doable at all.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
"I actually think that they earnestly think they're inventing the future, as well as they know how. They've looked at every Microsoft product, from Hotmail to SQL Server, and tried to fit them into a Bold New Vision Thing. But the trouble is that nobody there is actually inventing anything earthshaking. Which isn't surprising: not because Microsoft is stupid, which they're not, but because earthshaking new inventions are so rare and Microsoft only has a finite number of smart people. Only one person in the whole world invented Napster, and he didn't work for Microsoft. Microsoft desperately wants to believe that it can manufacture revolution, but even in the Cambrian explosion of the Internet, there are only a handful of truly revolutionary ideas per year, and the chances that one of them will happen inside the tiny world of Bill Gates and the knights of the Redmond table are vanishingly small. The chances are even smaller when you consider that a typical smart programmer working in the bowels of Microsoft on display drivers for Windows NT, who has a great idea, is probably not going to get his idea listened to." This is a qoute from Joel on Software
r ti cles/fog000000049.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/a
I think this sums up pretty much why MS is stalling.
-P
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
The only reason Linux isn't compatible with most hardware is because most hardware companies don't want to be bothered developing drivers for a less popular platform (*Cough* ATI). Theoretically, when Linux becomes a bit more mainstream, it will become nearly as supportive of hardware as Windows is. I agree about the ease of use argument, though. Until Linux becomes easier to install and use, it's not going to be as popular as Windows.
What the consumer needs is something that works. Now I love *NIX as I like to tweak, recompile etc but I'm a geek. My wife wants something she can turn on, type a letter, click print and then do something else. Windows does that well. You know that software will work on all PC's rather than having to make sure libfoo >=0.9.18.
Rus
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Sorry, I haven't seen a failure of .NET. I'm just curious where you're looking. I work for the US Army Corps of Engineers, and we use the heck out of .NET and everyone loves it. There is some Java development here, too, but most of our new stuff is in C# (which is, of course, essentially a Microsoft-ized Java).
.NET on a regular basis. Personally, I think it's great.
I haven't heard any complaints from people who use
And commerical UNIX's can be technically superior to BSD + Linux. Ever seen Linux go above 64 CPUs in an SSI? IRIX can and I believe so can solaris
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Quoting the article, "...companies have turned to Linux and other open-source software programs, seeing them as cheap but adequate alternatives." I think that this quote paints only a half-truth, and I also think that this quote does not do justice to a lot of the open source developers out there. Some companies may view certain pieces of open source software as "cheap but adequate," but I think many view them as technically superior. As a user, I turned to Linux because it allowed me to do many things that Windows did not. And as a developer, I don't try to produce only "adequate" software. I try to produce the best software possible. :-)
Their last bout of screwing their customers with Licensing 6.0 and the sneaky underhanded tricks they pulled with Media player and other "upgrades" by silently adding insane clauses in the EULA they slit their own throats.
I have shown MANY people the EULA's they "agreed to" and all of them have been outraged to the point that they are seeking alternatives and have ZERO trust for microsoft.
Hell I know a few people that bought Windows 2000 to downgrade their XP machines based solely on the licensing and "copyright violation prevention measures".
There is a way for microsoft to get back on top. but Ballmer and anyone who thinks like him will never be able to do it...
The era of bullying your customer into submission is coming to an end. and until they realize the basics of doing business... they will start to slip faster and faster....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That defies market logic -- to raise your prices when faced by a seemingly lower cost competitor.
The music industry is doing exactly that.
The issue for Microsoft, is that ANY strategy they adopt could backfire. Let's see:
.NET - next big thing....
.Net, except for the Vis Studio. Developers are the only ones who can proudly stay ignorant of what they're letting loose on their customers! BTW, what is .Net?
1) Putting license key schemes in place on their OS's
OTOH, when Joe SericePack gets pissed by the license-key thing, he's likely to switch over.
2) I imagine the same thing will happen with MS Office soon
Joe ServicePack is already running OO.o
3) Hope to god the console business takes off...
That's like retiring from the bread and butter business, and hope to sell lots of jam. Won't work.
4) Come up with a DRM scheme and convince the record companies
Too late, and too little. Apple's already done a good job. And music buffs already have MP3 firmly entrenched. Zero sum game.
5)
Only drawback being, MS is shit scared to brand anything with
6) Palladium - next big thing....
They've already hit a raw nerve with that one, it's got them tons of negative publicity. Renamingit as NGSCB will not make it better.
Now we know why His Baldness sold a million shares.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
With a lot of corporate customers moved over to the newest Microsoft Licensing formula, Microsoft is feeling the pressure to put up with what they have promised. They have been putting very little in the pipe with regards to updates with their latest products.
Mind you, they have put out Windows 2003 server, but as far as new features, it lacks in that departement. There are still organizations who are just recently migrating over to Windows 2000 server.
So, to make up for the technology gap, they will market over the gap. Doesn't surprise me one bit.
Wow to be able to write one memo and receive
millions of dollars in free publicity and advertising is pure genius. High profile executives take note. Ballmer is working the system quite well.
1. Insert appropriate quip here
2. Punctuation mark repeated thrice
3. Receive monetary benefits
music lover since 1969
Oh! You need not wait for the install to finish you can continue doing other things such as installing other packages.
Depending on which Linux version you are using it can be almost as simple. The last time I waited for an app to install was at a clients location on windows.
Windows has no advantage over Linux except for the limitation which it places on it's users. I'll use you own example to demonstarte; once you have chosen Direct X do not ever expect that it will run on anything but windows (and as long as M$ chosses to support it) but if you choose a standard there is always a possiblility of it running on all you future hardware.
Windows comes with a LOT of limitations and the only way you realise them is once you start using other products.....
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
BioWare screwed up. iD, ATITD and PomPom can do simultaneous or near-simultaneous releases of their products for Linux and Windows. The reason BioWare could not is they had zero regard for portability when they started, and that kind of thing has to be thought about from the start.
I've had more people thank me profusely when I've handed them a copy of Open Office, just because they didn't have to shell out big bucks for the MS product. They didn't even know an alternative was available.
It's probably even money that they'll bow to internal pressure to get something out, sort of like a WinME for XP or something, a stop gap to make people buy something.
Otherwise, all those people who paid extra to be in the guarenteed update program will be upset, because it will become obvious that they are not getting very much for their money.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Suprise, we now have Microsoft giving the reason they licensed SCO Unix: They believe IBM to be the biggest threat to them.
See these articles on the same memo: here, and here
He also is afraid that there is a "...greater focus on doing more with less" in business, which could spell trouble for Microsoft.
"So, don't just sit back, point your finger, and laugh; take a good look within the open source world and see what needs fixing."
is that they can do exactly that! Sit back, point finger and laugh - when (and if) MS does anything notewirthy, simply implement it in open source, and repeat!
I mean, if something were wrong with Open Source, would MS and SCO be raising such a hue and cry. Don't fix Open Source, simply lie back and relax - it's perfect already.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Apple may be marginalized, but they're the ones on the consumer end who keep building the bridges Microsoft has to walk across. No new technology coming forward? Apple built their own with the iPod. They were late to the game with iTunes, granted, but iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD are still leaps and bounds ahead of any competition in terms of ease-of-use.
The "digital hub" strategy they're embracing is working very well for Apple. The only problem, natch, is that digital camcorders (and camcorders and DVD burners) are still too expensive to be casually embraced by most consumers. But then, prices are getting lower all the time -- simple digital cameras under $100 are easy to come by, and used iPods can be found on eBay for as low as $100-$150. Apple knows that people are doing less and less with their personal computers but more and more with the other "computers" around them, and constantly works on ways to tie those peripherals to Apple's hardware and software.
What Microsoft ought to be throwing it's money towards, then, is building easy-to-use consumer software that consumers actually *want* to use, not because they're gimmicky but because they're easy to understand. Media Player is a good start. Their video editor needs much work, and integrating it with the ever-cheaper DVD burners and VideoCD writers could only help them.
Then let's try some new ideas, just to see if they take off. Skip the Tablet PC thing; build a cheap (like $50-$60) e-book reader that people can actually afford and will want to own, then get the magazine and newspaper publishers to sign on. Try to really integrate webcams and IM. A Flash-format animation creator for under $50 so people can make their own cartoons. They don't have to give this stuff away with the OS, if they make it cheap enough to buy separately. (I'm keen on that $50 price point, which is the most your average consumer will spend on non-profit-making software.)
Microsoft is, IMO, so bent on keeping the business markets that they've all but neglected their consumer market. Aside from some pretty colors, self-customizing menus and Apple-chasing software hacks, they've not done anything new for the home market since Windows 95 was released. It's good for them to spend time building tools that developers and managers want to have, but it helps their image immensely to add the stuff home users would want to have -- even if they don't make as much profit from it.
It is happening. They have no compelling products anymore. They have no compelling business model. They are faced with A. do the same as they have always done (won't grow the market share) B. manhandle future and current customers some more (at this point the customers are pissed and won't take it anymore) C. spread some more FUD or manipulate companies like SCO to try to destroy Linux et. al. (won't work either). They should indeed break themselves up... they are unwieldy and non-competative. I find it so laughable that they think they can innovate a "quantum leap in computing" that will put them ahead of all competitors when they've never innovated anything in the entire history of the company. MS software by definition cannot be ahead of everyone else due to Draconian license and activation measures... ahead of everyone else means unencumbered user experience among many other qualifiers... I'd certainly sum it up by saying they'd have to make the user feel like they not only have a choice but that their software is the right choice...and still on equal footing in terms of resources spent to make such a choice.
---rramble...
At one level Microsoft has so much cash in the bank that it could live off the hump for years and years and years. They identified the problem: lack of a recurring revenue stream, and the need to sell more OS/Office licences to create revenue.
There are two solutions for this problem:
1) Develop a strong services and solutions offering, where business will trust you with their IT and pay lots of money for good service
2) Invent a way to squeeze recurring revenue out of your installed user base without offering anything substantially more
IBM chose (1), Microsoft chose (2).
Consider the phases of IT: firstly there was the traditional IBM phase where by far the largest cost was hardware, even allowing for teams of people writing in-house software. This characterises the period up to, say, 1980, and by 1990 IBM was almost dead on its feet; secondly there was the phase where commercial packaged software was a major part of IT decision making, starting with putting Lotus 1-2-3 in front of decision makers, and continuing through the Windows/Office age. This phase was characterised by the PHB saying "I want 10,000 computers running Wordperfect and Lotus".
Now we are into the next phase, where both hardware and packaged software are commodities within a solution or service. This is why companies such as EDS, CSC and IBM (and smaller players in this market) matter more than Microsoft. If Ballmer thinks that some new technological gizmo will get people spending again then he's wrong: there may well be a lot of individual buyers for new toys, but neither the business desktop nor my mum need or want a new killer technology. They need, and already have, a working toolset to send email, browse the web (and use web enabled applications) and create documents. Essentially we have now commoditised the information rather than the software (yes, I know this process isn't complete, but it's under way).
Now the good bit: Microsoft has so much cash that it needn't deal with this issue for years yet. IBM got into deep doodoo before reinventing itself. Microsoft is showing the signs that it expects to spend several years yet digging the hole in the same place.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
What is "superior" depends entirely on your needs.
If Windows offers you exactly what you need, Windows is superior for that task. If Linux offers you exactly what you need, Linux is superior for that task.
"Superior" is a bad word to use, though. Try "best suited" or "works best". I am not going to claim that I know exactly what is best at what - I am sure others have their informed opinions, and are probably debating the details as we speak (does Linux really run better with multiple processors, and so on). So I try to stay out of discussions like this. But you are making a sweeping statement based on nothing but ignorance.
Your "fact" is nothing but a badly informed opinion it seems. BSD is a branch of Linux? Please.
Clever signature text goes here.
Why can Windows 95 and Windows ME run DOS applications better than Windows 2000? Are you really so clueless that you cannot understand a simple product line history?
I'll try to use simple words for your benefit.
Windows ME is a direct decendent of Windows 98, which was a direct decendent of Windows 95, which was a direct decendent of Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.2.
Windows XP is a direct decendent of Windows 2000 which was a direct decendent of Windows NT 4, which was a direct desecendent of Windows NT 3.5, which was a brand new product. Windows NT 3.5 was not based on DOS.
The two product lines are generally refered to as Windows9x and WindowsNT. The 9x line of systems contains a lot of legacy code back to DOS. It can thunk to real mode and often does. When you run a COMMAND.EXE shell in a Win9x OS, you really are running DOS. Code thunks to real mode and can call real BIOS functions via. software interupts.
When you run a COMMAND.EXE (Not CMD.EXE) shell in WinNT, you're not really running DOS. You're running something that is a lot like DOS, but it is really running in a virtual x86 machine. You can't thunk directly to the BIOS from inside this machine as software interupts get caught by the virtual machine and redirected via. NT. So its not really DOS, it just tries to act like it.
I'm sure I've lost you in this vastly over simplified explanation, but I figure you can't possibly be any more clueless after having read it.
Now, if you'd said say, extensions to Win32 across the Win9x and WinNT product lines causing incompatabilities, you might have been onto something. Not much, mind you, but a better bet than trying to talk about Windows compatability using DOS as an example.
MS has been trying to figure out a way to stop the upgrade cycle for some time now. They've been looking at software rental and time limited licensing.
In 1999(ish), customers wanted to keep Office 97. It did everything they needed.
Microsoft wanted people to buy new software. They crammed all the features they could into Office 2000, but aside from making Clippy easier to get rid of, people weren't compelled. It wasn't until Microsoft refused to sell Office 97 licenses that Office 2000 sales really picked up.
OpenOffice has a competitive edge here. As long as the Win32 api sticks, or Linux is ported to modern CPUs, you will always be able to put OpenOffice on a new machine.
So, Microsoft needs to be competitive (long term... short term OO is unnoticable). Microsoft needs revenue. Customers need to write, read and share information.
.Net offers them this ability, and their new licensing offers them this ability. If they supported fat client software with the tenaciousness of IBM (e.g. Office 97 will be supported until some nutty year like 2020 and the file format will always be supported), or if they went to that screwed up ASP model with .net, they can lock customers in to regular fees, but they can also offer continual improvements and pay-per-use features.
People hate the upgrade cycle. Where I work, we're only deploying Windows XP and Office XP because Microsoft will eventually drop support for 2000.
Again: Microsoft is a monopoly, and has been convicted of abusing it.
Apple is NOT and never was a monopoly. Calling what apple has over their hardware and software a monopoly is a joke compared to microsoft.
Microsoft will have to do a better job of persuading customers it has something they need
How can you be this smart and this delusional at the same time? You want to make Linux functionally irrelevant as a business OS? Here are some **REAL** ideas off the top of my head:
1) Abandon Palladium. We really don't want to use our PCs to watch movies - we have $50 DVD players for that -- see #3. 'Nuff said.
2) For that matter, your EULAs are WAY THE F___ OUT OF CONTROL. "Hmmm, it sure is an important OS security patch, but damned if I'm gonna install it because it sez right here that doing so gives MS the right to control my PC." I don't care what you *intend*, that's what it sez. If you want to control what's on my PC and what I can do with it, then you buy it for me, Mkay?
3) Quit stalking your customers like a collections company. Abolish Open Licensing 6.0 and this *STUPID* software-by-subscription idea of yours. (If you want me to re-buy your software every year, those annual subscription fees are going to have to be lower -- a **LOT** **F___'IN** **LOWER**. Office '95 was good enough for me.
4) Admit that your security problems are a direct result of your insistance in violating the #1 rule of software design: YOU NEVER MIX CODE AND DATA TOGETHER. You have specifically engineered every product you sell to be scriptable. STOP IT! Remove the OS-level scripting capabilities from your products and provide patches to your current customers to do the same on previous versions.
5) You guys are acting like the software engineering divisions at HP! Stop trying to improve things that don't need improving and realize that the only perfection is simplicity. Go out and play some golf, maybe take some dancing lessons.
Sure, I like Linux, but I also like Windows. My problem is that even though I have already given you my hard-earned money many times over, I feel like you've nailed a bulls-eye on my back and handed out shotguns to all your beer-swilling pals.
I am exploring alternatives because sticking with you is like being a hostage (as in gun-to-the-head) in a car speeding down a desert highway. If I jump out, it'll hurt, but once I stop rolling, get up, brush myself off and walk back to town, I'll be in control again.
Wow, not-so-ironically, it **really** **is** much more about 'freedom' than 'free'-dom.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
"...with no immediate breakthroughs in technology coming..."
Translation: We've run out of other people's ideas to steal.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
No, Microsoft doesn't create software.
.NET? Windows NT/XP/2000? XBox?
No? Who did they steal BOB from? Word? Excel? Visual Studio? Visual Basic?
I call BS. Sure, like virtually every other company in existance, Microsoft occassionally bought into a tech that was already seeded, and then enhanced it, rather than starting from scratch. There's nothing nefarious about that - that's just good business.
But to claim that they've created nothing new is pure ignorance.
Kevin.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Do I think M$ is going to just engage in marketing? No, I don't. M$ will move with the times - when they can't drive them. They blew off the Web then came back with a vengeance.
So, I expect that the bad of lame and FUD-filled marketing campaigns will be coupled with some attempts to make actual, serious improvements. I don't expect any of them to be that original, but I expect them.
M$, being on the top, doesn't have to try as hard to stay there or react as quickly as others. I'd say they know that.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Actually, this raises a very interesting issue. You know, I happened to be chatting with a CEO of a leading Indian software company once, asking him why most Indian software is catered for the international market and not the Indian market per se. In particular, I was concerned about the lack of application development in Indian language software, and asked him why the companies couldn't develop a viable Indian market for their products.
I expected he'd say something about "improverished" India and all that crap (actually went prepared with a few references to squash just that argument), but his point was, to say the least, unexpected. He said, "The world's largest software maker, Microsoft, spends nearly a billion dollars for marketing its flagship product, Win XP, and that too in its home ground. Imagine how much we small fishhave to spend". Or something to that effect.
Since you raise this point about marketing, I'm curious:- what's the view out there in the Valley? How much do you guys have to spend on, or how important is, marketing your software?
More than mere navel gazing.
"...companies have turned to Linux and other open-source software programs, seeing them as cheap but adequate alternatives."
I'd amend this to say companies find that Linux and Friends aren't just "cheap but adequate." Instead, we find on the server side that they are cheap, rock solid, effective, and simple. In my opinion, Microsoft does do many things well. But MS continues to believe that "featurization" is what companies want, and that corporate types will see additional features as being worth additional time, trouble, and money. What MS might finally be seeing is that more feature-laden, more trouble-prone, and more expensive is NOT what we're looking for. Open Source code should serve as a model for Microsoft, at least in the back office, because it's written by geeks, for geeks. And, obviously, it works.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Of course Microsoft makes a lot of their software, I'm saying that they nearly never *create* anything new. They didn't invent spredsheets, Visicalc (for Apple IIs) did, but they grabbed the concept, features, cloned them and made them into a successful product. That's their force : know how to shape and sell something well to the mass, and that's not a bad thing in itself. They didn't invent word processing either, nor Basic. As for .NET, it's part of their strategy against Java : undermine Java with specific incompatibilities a while ago, then roll their own offering (.NET is a Java clone at the core). The Xbox ? looks like a dedicated PC to me. NT/XP/2000 ? better products or not, where are the major innovations in those products ?
.NET, and that was really pathetic.
And yeah, they invented Clippy. I believe that's the extent of their capacity of genuine innovation (i.e. without acquiring novel companies).
I'm not talking about making software, I'm talking about making innovative software. Note that I freely recognize that most opensource zealots don't do any better, including Stallman who couldn't do any better than come up with dotgnu when M$ announced
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...school sales literally kept [Apple] afloat while the IBM PC ate their lunches (...)
:P
What do you mean? They had swimming on their schedule or something?
How can this statement be true if:
1) Sun Java, by many developers admissions, is one of the most poorly written technologies in this day and age?
2) One of the biggest Drawbacks for Distributed Transactions is not the Operating Systems mentioned above but the limited protocols available for the Distributed Transaction Model to use? This is an issue on all operating systems on the market.
3) Interoperability will continue to be a roadblock for years to come?
4) Solutions like these and any alternatives are restrictive in it's archetecture?
5) No matter what the OS, language, or application is, resource conflicts will still be a major problem in this model.
6) Many of the current applications used in the Distributed transaction model are old, outdated, and are an increasing liability to the problems inherent in said model.
7) Scalability. There is no mention of this at all. Even the link above implies a single server architecture.
8) Ease of Development. Even you mention above that Java Classloaders are a hard thing to grok. How are Developers to create an application with such a complex language to wade through?
The problems and limits with the Distributed Transaction model is hardly an OS or a programming language issue. It's a much, much more broader issue that needs to be recognized and addressed.
No one can say Unix/Java is much better at Distributed Transactions when it's in the same boat as Windows Operating systems with the same strenghts and weaknesses.
Dolemite
_________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
I agree. I would guess that the average man in the street has first and foremost on his mind to get the hell outta the street...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
If MS spent their time focusing on making their software better instead of trying to destroy everything else, they probably wouldn't have any competition. They have the skills and resources to create the best product out there, but they never do it. There's something wrong when a software company has more attorneys on it's payroll than programmers...
Windows has no advantage over Linux except for the limitation which it places on it's users.
You are clearly biased.
Windows has checkboxes for things that take the hacking of scripts and textfiles in Linux. You cannot pop in a CD in Linux, have an autoplay menu, and install away, adding an uninstaller to the "start menu." I could go on and on.
"Sufferin' succotash."
" . . . and with the Linux computer operating system and a batch of other open-source programs biting at its heels, Microsoft will have to do a better job of persuading customers it has something they need."
"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world....without you. A world without rules and controls. Without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there, is a choice I leave to you."
It sounds like everything being asked for could be done with something like a customized Knoppix. As you say, a friendly set of utilities for lightly customizing the final disk would be nice. If the parent in question has a spare PC that meets a minimum set of requirements then chuck in a nice friendly "Permanent Install icon" on the desktop. That would sidestep the repartitioning issue pretty handily.
A less heavy handed approach would be something like those FOSS cds for Windows we heard about a few months ago. Put the Windows ports of some schoolwork relavent projects on some CDs and hand those out.
Take the rescent Neverwinter Nights fiasco. It took Bioware forever to choose a platform to handle the graphics and even longer to choose one to handle the sound.
This has nothing to do with Linux being inferior in not compatible. Bioware made the mistake of choosing technologies that were not crossplatform with which to build their software. They used Fink for video and some other proprietary sound system for building NWN. Neither of which was ported to Linux and neither made the source code available to make a port possible. As a result, they had become dependent on technologies they had no control over. This was their stupidity, not a failure on the part of Linux.
If Bioware had used SDL and other open and portable technologies, they would be able to run on virtually any platform with minimal porting effort.
This is alagous to saying "I used to MFC to write my application instead of Qt (which exists on most GUI platforms today). As a result, it doesn't run on Linux because there is no MFC for Linux. I do not have the source for MFC and the vendor who supplies MFC will not port it. Ergo, Linux sucks."
That makes no fucking sense.
Join Tor today!
Isn't this what we customers have been saying, nay, *screaming*, for years now?
I recall the days when U.S. automakers tried to sell cars by telling the buyer, "you need what we build", before they got clobbered by the imports with their "we'll build what you need" attitude. I wouldn't be looking elsewhere if Microsoft's products met my needs.
OTOH there's a big *natural* market for a company with the Features Uber Alles culture. If Microsoft would be content with a large, secure slice of the pie, instead of trying to grab the whole pie, they could do very well without revolutionary change.
The trouble comes when you try to *impose* your vision of the market on a segment which holds to a radically different vision. Lose the vision, or lose the ambition to own the market; you'll never achieve both together.
"Trustworthy Computing" means that suppliers (primarily Microsoft) can trust it, not the owner or user.
Longhorn will break everything, which is a feature they'll have a real problem selling to end-users without an enormous helping of new value somewhere (and possibly even then). By which time, the Linus Torvalds World Domination Programme will have caught up with them. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You seem to have a couple things confused. I could be mistaken, but it looks that way.
;)
Taking forever to choose a platform for graphics and sound isn't a product of compatibility, it's a product of choice. I know that's a foreign concept to a lot of computer users, so I'll explain. You see, in an efficient marketplace, there are generally several competitors, all who have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes, it will take a customer more than half a second(!!) to decide, based on these strengths and weaknesses, which is fine, because in that way, mulitple products(now, this is the important part now) can co-exist because not every customer has the same requirements. To put this in a less abstract way, look at your grocers juice aisle, at the orange juice. Odds are, there might be Sun Rype, Dole, Minute Maid and Sunkist, all in the same aisle. They don't stock them all because it's the idealistic thing to do, they do it because some people have different goals and different desires.(My personal favourite is Sun Rype, because the rest taste like orange peels).
As for the installer, last time I checked, Linux was not Red Hat. Mandrake, for instance, has an installation from scratch that puts the Windows 2k or XP installations to shame in terms of allowing the beginner to install the product without knowing a thing, yet allowing experts to delve into details.
I wouldn't really argue that Linux is technically superior in every way to Windows, as there are a few features which I think windows does better than the Linux platforms I've seen(and I doubt that will change until the 2.6 kernel is released and bundled into new distributions), but you haven't given an example otherwise. The lack of choice on the Windows platform and the fact that you don't think the installer is simple enough are not technical reasons Windows would be superior to Linux. They're pet peeves at best, and massive misinterpetations of what exactly "Linux" is at worst.
Great idea using the old "I'll probably get modded down for saying this" bluff. Gets 'em every time. Weakminded fools. Though I'll probably be modded to hell for saying that.
It's been a long time.
Admit that your security problems are a direct result of your insistance in violating the #1 rule of software design: YOU NEVER MIX CODE AND DATA TOGETHER. You have specifically engineered every product you sell to be scriptable. STOP IT!
For years Apple has had AppleScript, an extremely powerful scripting language. Almost every worthwhile Mac application is scriptable. In all the years that AppleScript has been around, how many times has this been exploited? Once, and it was a pretty poor job.
The problem is not the scriptability of Microsoft's products, it's just that they chose to make it a gee-whiz feature and get it out in the marketplace, instead of taking the time and doing it right.
~Philly
audiocd:/ (yes, put an audio CD in your first CD drive before you click)
fish://luscious@your.fave.ssh.server
smb://nearestdozebox/c
There are plenty of others.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Because MSoft only has two money making product sets (Windows and Office) - every other venture they have launched in order to open up a new revenue stream has (so far) proven to be a dud. Lets break these profit centres down a bit...
Windows makes money because it is the default OS solution for the desktop, a position which it inherited from DOS and which arose because it was in the right place at the right time for the personal computing boom. This lock on the desktop has been leveraged to make a creditable showing in the workstation, servers and enteprise solutions space.
Office is a money maker because MSoft were able to leverage their lock on the desktop OS in order to torpedo their competition and/or use the massive pile of money they had accumulated from the desktop OS to aquire niche application products (Visio for diagrams, FoxPro for databases etc).
The pattern is clear. MSoft is extremely bad at bringing products to market or recognising and breaking into new spaces in the competitive landscape. In the near 30 years of their existence they have only managed to pull it off successfully four times (desktop OS, high end OS, Office, the browser wars). Other than the first (which was luck) each time this has been because they were able to leverage their OS lock in order to sharpen their product's edge and/or kneecap the competition.
The consequence of this is that the OS lock is the third rail for MSoft - anything that threatens this lock is a 'kill the company' issue and, more immediately, is a 'kill the shareprice' issue (this is important because MSoft's steroidal shareprice has allowed them to do some extremely aggressive financial engineering around their options in order to massage their after-tax profits stream, the warchest that the OS cash cow provides has been extremely useful as well of course).
Offering Office on their rising competitor in the desktop OS space (something they haven't had to deal with since the late 80s) would be a priceless endorsement of (and remove a significant barrier to adoption for) that competitor. It would be a significant blow to the cornerstone and foundation of every strategic success they have achieved in their history, knock the bottom out of one half of their current revenue stream and poison their shareprice. From Steve Ballmer's perspective these considerations make it far from a no brainer.
Regards
Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h
My lab just bought several Dell boxes with RedHat 8.0 and HP boxes with Mandrake 9.0 pre-installed, including support contracts. The Dell boxes were US$1500+, but the HPs were all less than US$1000.
So some OEMs are ready right now and I was happy to buy from them.
"We've bought up all the good companies and stifled all other innovation; we're screwed unless we can come up with something original on our own!" -- "And no, buying Red Hat isn't an option!"
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Uhh, you do realize that the "course of action" that they took to correct their own defects were to break interoperability and strike up OEM deals to rub out the competition, right? It goes back to before Win3.1 to the DOS days. They shut out DRDos, a superior product. This is well documented. As is the fact that Windows 3.1 reported false errors if you tried to install it on DRDos instead of MSDos.
So no, the Open Source doesn't need to look to Microsoft for any examples on how to fix things. We need to look at them for reminders of what NOT to do.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
RedHat, SuSe, and Mandrake have gotten pretty much point-n-click installation. KDE and Gnome are so easy to use that non-technical people can find their way without help.
However, the OS X has got them all beat. It's not perfect, it's still missing multiple desktops, but OS X is stable, easy to use and loads of familiar applications, plus it has exceptionally easy maintenance. That it also looks good, makes ideal for places where you have to look at it a lot -- home or a public reception area.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
There was an interesting editorial in eWeek recently, that compared Microsoft to IBM of the early 1980s: IBM was the biggest gorilla and for practical purposes, the only game in town, and used that status to bully its customers into higher prices and ever-more-onerous contracts. This eventually backfired, eroding IBM's marketshare and forcing them to rework their business model. The article opined that M$ is going to suffer the same market erosion as IBM did, for the same reasons, and that M$ will likewise eventually have to find a new marketing model, and become a tolerably good corporate citizen like it or not. It predicted that this would occur in the next 4 to 5 years, which I think is reasonable given the deliberate pace at which enterprise customers consider and deploy infrastructure changes.
From what I've read, M$ is already internally run as an OS division and an apps division, in that they are competing workspaces that really don't speak to one another much. So I doubt that being two separate companies would do much for innovation, especially since each would still have the lion's share of its respective market. Now, if M$ actually had to compete on its own merits again, that would likely do it.
BTW, as a M$ shareholder, my observation is that their strongarm tactics are *damaging* my stock value, and as a shareholder I want them to knock it off and let the market (piracy included as a market force) do its own thing. After all, before Activation reared its ugly head, M$'s non-inflated stock value was peaking around $80, and splitting regularly. Now it's lucky to peak at $40 (and in fact is hovering around $25 and hasn't split in a couple years). Coincidence? I don't think so.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As a metter of fact YES you can just check off some check boxes, but most programes realise that it make no sense to be obliged to start the app in order to configure it, or if you have multiple stations to configure a simple cp of a file can save an enourmous amount of time, or even better an NFS mount of the config files.
What stops you from poping in a CD? Most people get frustrated when an installer starts as soon as they slide the CD in because most of the time they are not installing anything they just want to acces that stupid clip art or such. If you wish it to autostart thats not an issue either, lame but not an issue.
I will stick to my FreeBSD example above;
Install new package: pkg_add
Remove package: pkg_delete
LIst of what is installed: pkg_info
I need something which I have installed but do not remember what: apropos
I could also go on an on and on and on. Windows does some things well provided you give up your freedom but most tasks can be done easier using another OS. I make a living in computers I do not have the time to play on them and most of the time I prefer to play on PS and Nintendo. If you like Windows, good for you, just stop telling me it's great. It took MS 8 years to catch up to Linux in stability, I'm hoping it will take them less time to fix the security.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I need to sue SlashDot for all the Hot Coffee I spilt on myself laughing!!!
HenryJamesFeltus.com
There was one important point reported by the Wall Street Journal that was left of these other accounts of the memo. Balmer mentioned lowering licensing fees to attract young developers to working with Microsoft tools over Linux.
Certainly one of the factors contributing to the growth of free software is that there is no entry fee for aspiring coders to jump in and start working with a range of free tools available. Thus, MS is not only at risk of loosing end users but also pontential contributors to add to the "value" of their products.
Oh, that's true. Microsoft has bought many software companies and stagnated all the code. I could care less what they do outside unAmerican lobby efforts. They can't stagnate free code without bad laws to back them up any more than they can win developers back. It was over about 4 years ago when all of the developers left the M$ community. The result is what you see. Microsoft's employees can only do so much. The free software world is doing much more.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When Apple releases OS X Panther, it will give Microsoft a few months of new innovations to work on.
The solutions? More adverts and a continued effort of dominate every facet of computing. It's stupid because they can't maintain what the've already got. Though hoplessly outnumbered, they continue to try to take on new projects, X-Box, moble phones, servers, handhelds. Nuts, their greed is their undoing.
It's only going to get worse for them. They have entered the typical downward cycle of a failing company. Their basic model of software development through aquisition and minimal maintenence was never nice but is now dysfuncitonal as fewer people take the bait and develop for M$ platforms. Look for them to become ever less capable of making decisions and more erratic. They will concentrate on silly things like tablet PCs and bet the company multiple times on hardware their software can't support in a competitive way. At some point their declining stock price will trigger panics and layoffs. In the end they will engage in more silly SCO type lawsuits because that's all they will have left.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Read this. Longhorn will not be backwards compatible. Windows Server 2003 is not compatible with Windows 2000, so what makes you think they wouldn't further break compatibility? As my employer has found out they are in the continual process of making customers re-write their applications to run on Windows. This continues their revenue stream. Why do customers put up with this? Past investment in Microsoft makes people reluctant to give up. Desktop monopoly is also a major factor.
Developers: We can use your help.
Not true -- MSFT split 2 for 1 in February.
That thing didn't read like a wakeup call at all. And it certainly wasn't something Ballmer will regret got leaked. In fact, quite the contrary...
It read very much like a piece of "sure hope this leaks quick" propaganda.
Everything semi-critical of MS, or anything suggesting that "we have work to do", etc...was carefully worded to be pretty light work, while at the same time seeming honest and responsible. People respond well to those thin veils of apparent sincerity.
The real purpose of the note was to press forward with that same old stuff about the lack of accountability behind OpenSource. Tell us again how nobody is responsible for OpenSource. Lacking a commercial interest, OpenSource is a hodge podge of buggy software built by faceless hackers who have no long-term interest and might even care to purposefully endanger your IT system with notions of anarchy!!
Run for the hills!!!
Yep, sounds like the same old stuff. Been reading that stuff for years. Where else did we just read this a few days ago? Oh yeah, Darl McBride's / SCO's comments...
Soon the Gimp will get some little improvement that will have Adobe shouting the same stuff. Maybe they already should.
[These comments best converted to PDF using GhostView]
"As the market for server technologies continues to diversify it is more important than ever that people with MCSE certification expand their knowledge base. Configuring and administering BSD and Linux servers and interoperating with the Microsoft server platform are skills no sef-respecting IT person should be without."
"Although we have a wide base of users now there is no guarantee that our market penetration will continue to expand, especially as more and more trend-setters in the enterprise sector awaken to the advantages of Open Source, Open Standards, and free alternatives to our overdesigned proprietary solutions."
He continued, "It may surprise you to know that at Microsoft we have many departments running Linux, BSD, and other Unix platforms on a day-to-day basis. Many of our programmers contribute to Open Source projects in their personal time. Historically we have discouraged this kind of activity, but we have had a culture shift in Redmond - an "Enlightenment" if you will. We have come to understand that communication between manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, support, and customers is the essential thing, and we can no longer narrowly focus on market dominance for its own sake."
"You may recall the embarassing flap over Open Source in Peru in which a local politician upbraided one of our representatives but good. We were essentially handed our hat on that one. At the time I was upset, Bill was upset; even Stuart Allchin - who normally shows no emotion at all - was clearly bothered by the incident. That politician, a Mister Villanueva, was the David to our Goliath, and it was a wake up call for us. Since then more and more governing bodies - from Germany to Italy to local, municipal, and state governments here in the United States - are mandating Open Source and Open Standards to meet their essential fiduciary responsibilities. We can't ignore the realities, and we have to face facts. Our software is slow to evolve and slow to recover when flaws are found. Security flaws aren't found as often or fixed as quickly as they could be. Open Source has a lot of lessons for our industry."
"We've been asked many times, by a large share of our user base, to open our software's source code and make it available so that they can customize it to their needs or address the flaws I mentioned. Up to now we've been very reserved about this. It goes back as far as Bill's open letter, where he defended his right to make a little money from programming. That was a big step, and in many ways it was the birth of Microsoft. That same ethos has guided our relationship with our partners and developers. Our partners expect to make money on our Windows platform, whether desktop or server, and they have been more than willing to give something back for the privilege. These partnerships are a continuous exchange of knowledge and innovation. Take a look in the back room of any respectable enterprise and you'll find the evidence. Thousands upon thousands of MSDN disks have been provided to developers over the years. Trillions of lines of source code have been provided to document our APIs and frameworks. The evidence can be weighed in tons."
"Where am I going with this? I'm not really sure. The culture of Microsoft has been sick for a long time. The problems we experience are endemic, and too numerous to list. Recent audits uncovered over twenty development projects and five whole departments we didn't even know existed. Obviously the reforms we need are deep. I hope we'll continue this dialogue for the sake of the whole information ecosystem."
"Normally I would take questions at this point, but I've run a little long and I'm late for my dance lesson."
-- thinkyhead software and media
Customers will buy Longhorn for the same reason they've bought all other Windows systems. It will come on all new PC's, it'll break compatibility with older versions, and eventually, it'll get to be too much of a hassle NOT to upgrade.
So what else is new?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
From the article: Also, following its recent commitment to delaying software releases until it has ironed out all the bugs â" a marked departure from the companyâ(TM)s earlier practice â" Microsoft seems more than prepared to wait.
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But, what was at the bottom of the ASP page?
Actually, the guts of what became Visual Basic were bought from another company that produced a RAD product called Ruby. (No, not the same Ruby, if you're thinking of the current open-source programming environment.)
Much of the guts of what became Windows NT was based on other OSes - many of the coders were from the old VMS team from DEC, hired along with Dave Cutler.
Visual C/C++ was bought - originally it was Lattice C, and Microsoft bought that, and turned it into their C/C++ compiler suite. They've built on that since.
Word and Excel (originally Multiplan) originated in the Microsoft MBU, and were eventually adapted for use on PCs. Yes, they developed them, but they borrowed many ideas from their competition.
Yes, most of Microsoft's product line was acquired, not developed. Yes, a few of their products were originated by them, but a precious few. It's not hugely surprising that some people aren't impressed about Microsoft's call fora revitalization of "innovation" in Microsoft, considering they've never really been what you could call "innovators". Really, the only product I know of that they came up with totally on their own was Bob - and we know how successful that was. (And who was the project manager on Bob? The woman who's now Gates' wife. How 'bout that...)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Are you kidding? Let's play Match MS's "Innovation" to the product that preceded it, shall we?
Word? WordPerfect, Wordstar. MS was WAY late in the game. Cripes, I was word-processing ten years before Word 1.0. And the Mac had a WYSIWYG word-processor long before Word 1.0.
Excel? Lotus 1.2.3./VisiCalc. Remember, Lotus sued MS (and won) over this point. I don't agree with the decision in that particular case, but still, as for which came first, Lotus has that proven in court.
Access? dBase, Foxpro, Paradox... All were many years ahead, and were not originally MS products.
Visual Studio? Spare me? Borland's IDE beat 'em to it by many years. Even their Turbo-Vision interface for DOS put MSC7's environment to shame, years prior, and when it did come out MSC for WIndows still ran in DOS mode. "Programmer's Workbench" they called it, but impossible to work in as it only allowed one open file at a time. Not viable in C.
Windows? MacOS/Xerox Star. I guess MS innovated doing it so badly, compared to Apple's uber-elegant (for the time) offering.
Windows NT? Early installations popped open clearly visible "OS/2 Windows," so you tell me.
Disk Compression? Stac Software's Stacker 2.0, without the useful utilities.
Disk Defrag? Norton Utilities 4.0, without the advanced features and hex editor. [With a hex-editor, you could fix the Windows 3.1 version checker and make it run on DR-DOS and 4DOS.]
MS-DOS? Seattle Systems' CP/M-86.
Even good old HIMEM.SYS was preceded by 386Max and Quarterdeck's (FAR superior) QEMM product. And MS-DOS didn't get EMM/XMM support until DR-DOS and 4DOS started taking hold. And unlike Quarterdeck's offering, MS's couldn't re-allocate between Extended and Expanded memory on the fly.
Speaking of Quarterdeck, anyone remember Gates's semi-famous quote about it being "impossible" to multi-task MS-DOS? I read it for the first time in a DOS window under DesqView, one of three DOS sessions I had open at the time... MS has never had a firm grasp of how their software works, because it's so rarely theirs to begin with.
Come to think of it, PowerPoint is the only successful MS product that I can't find a clear 1:1 predecessor for. And even then, I knew people who were using Autodesk Animator for that purpose, almost a decade prior. That's not 1:1 so I'll let it go.
Oh yeah, there's also Bob. Who else would have thought of putting a GUI shell on a GUI shell?
The problem with SlashDot is a lack of objectivity. A large number of people here seem to want to see Microsoft fall, and interpret any news about Microsoft as evidence of MS's impending doom or as proof of their evil ways. Umm, gee, guys -- take a reality pill, will ya? Some things MS does might be stupid and unethical, but for the most part, it acts just like any other big business. And just like any other business, it wins some and loses some.
In this case, Steve's message is simple: we just shipped Windows Server 2003, and our next big Windows release isn't for several more years. Until then, we still have to make money, and we have to improve our image. Lets do it in every way possible: fix our bugs, fix application inconsistencies, fix marketing and licensing problems, and work hard to advertise our advantages over our competition.
So a question to all those doomsayers: what is wrong with that statement? All companies have up and down times. Microsoft has just come off of two years of lotsa releases (a lot of projects got finished and released at about the same time), and now they're going to hit a few years with no major releases. Steve is charting the strategy for that span of time to make sure that during this time the company is productive.
Two additional points that I wanted to mention after reading a lot of other posts: Microsoft's "innovation" and Microsoft's "doom".
First, there is a continual accusation that Microsoft doesn't innovate, that everything done by Microsoft was done by somebody else first. To the extent that this is true, it is also true of everybody else in the industry: few software companies can actually claim to have invented the program genre that they produce. On the other hand, coming up with a good idea isn't everything -- creating a good implementation of the idea and getting it on the market is a lot of work, too, and Microsoft has done plenty of that. In addition, whatever anybody else says, Linux and related technologies are doing a heck of a lot of catch-up with Microsoft, simply implementing stuff that Windows has had from the beginning. Kernel-mode threading? Windows NT 3.1 had it, as did Windows 95. Fully re-entrant kernel? Windows NT 3.1 had it. Standard printing system? Windows 3.0 (perhaps before, I don't know). Kernel modules, loadable drivers, etc. -- NT has it. It also has COM (messy, but it works) which offers great support for component sharing and interoperability (Gnome is starting to pick up some similar stuff, and CORBA has some similar functionality, but none are heavily integrated into and supported by the OS). A developer can write an application that uses a GUI, threads, fonts, COM, etc. without having to worry about widget sets and without the user having to run "configure" to adapt the program at the source level to whatever stuff is available on the system. Sure, the sharing goes both ways, but don't knock Windows as an OS -- it has a lot of useful stuff under the hood that is still lacking in Linux and even BSD.
Now granted, not all of that stuff is necessary for every user. There is no reason to have all of that running for, say, a static web server or a database. I run my home firewall on FreeBSD, not Windows. This is forcing Microsoft to focus on more advanced features and to provide additional features and functionality for the more complicated scenarios where the extra capabilities of Windows give it an advantage -- ASP.Net, SQL Server 64-bit edition, Remote Desktop for managing the servers, etc. For application servers, complex database apps, desktops, etc., Windows still has functionality that people want that is missing from Linux. Linux will continue to create pressure for Windows to innovate as it picks up on these features, and I think that is a very good thing -- it forces Microsoft to focus on core areas that it might otherwise have ignored (reliability, security, etc.). But at this point, Windows is still way ahead on many features that are very important to me.
So Micro
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Well, the word "steal" isn't quite correct, but if you say "bought" or "borrowed" then all of your examples fall flat. Let's go through them all:
BOB was a rather poor reimplementation of a software product called Lemon Dog written by the Inner Workings company. Microsoft's character in Bob was Rocky Dog, if you recall. Inner Workings sued Microsoft over that one (and settled out of court I think).
Visual Basic was originally called Ruby. It was written by the Cooper Software Company and bought by Microsoft in 1991.
Windows NT was largely written by Dave Cutler's crew who was "bought" en-masse from Digital. It's little wonder that NT and VMS share a fair number of similar design concepts; there are many in-depth articles discussing the similarities. The user interface is actually CDE-based; lots of people seem to forget that CDE was both a standard co-developed by Sun, IBM and Microsoft as well as an implementation that seems now to be associated mostly with UNIX systems. Many other parts of Windows NT were co-developed with IBM as part of the OS/2 project before Microsoft decided to go their own way with Windows.
I don't think anybody could seriously argue that .NET is anything other than a direct ripoff of J2SE and J2EE. Even the architectural diagrams are the same. When you go to a .NET Developer course the instructors start with "basically it's just like J2EE".
Visual Studio is ill-defined. Visual C is just Lattice C bought from Lattice Technologies. Visual Sourcesafe was bought from OneTree Software. The user interface for Visual Studio (the editors and syntax checkers, etc) are obviously a ripoff of Visual Cafe from Symantec; even the name lacks any imagination.
Xbox is a PC masquerading as a console. It was most certainly a Johnny-come-lately to the console market. It was most certainly a "me too" response from Microsoft. I don't see how you can possibly argue that the Xbox is an example of Microsoft creating something new.
Word, Excel, and all the office suites. Well those things are more an evolution than anything else. You can certainly argue that their first versions were ripoffs of existing products (eg, WordPerfect, 1-2-3, Visicalc) but there is little resemblance to those original products in the modern versions. PowerPoint was bought from ForeThought Technologies; and it shows, because PowerPoint has never properly integrated into Office.
I'm sure they have created something new (they are a huge company with 1000s of projects) but I am honestly struggling to find an example. Nothing you've listed is all that convincing. Even their original flagship products - MS-DOS and Basic - were either bought or "borrowed". Microsoft is a good repackager and reimplementor, but they have never been a good creator of software or ideas.