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Microsoft's Forgotten Mistakes
seattlenerd writes "In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail. A lot. This piece in Seattle Weekly points out some of the many failures -- from ActiMates Barney to Microsoft at Work to pending disasters in smartphones and interactive TV (despite recent PR-worthy announcements). But like most litter, the failures are swept under the rug in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history." Of course, like any big company, Microsoft is not a monolith.
You forgot to mention Windows.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Don't forget Microsoft Bob!
better known as ms bomb !
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
If you are afraid to fail, you will never succeed.
I could fail and be rich at the same time too.
FP
What a hit that was!
...failed at just about everything before becoming president.
You can't innovate without failure (opens door for innovation comment trolls). The article discusses technologies that they DID help pioneer, not just the ones they usurped.
HEY NOW! Every large software company has a FEW little things that didn't fly!
My Karma is bad. May I take you out for a drink? It's on me...
What do you expect, it was posted by Timothy, the resident /. troll editor...
I take that back. Stupid Thunderbird's not searching for text by default anymore. :-(
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
But seriously, everybody knows experimentation and failure cannot be avoided. Most businesses just don't have the luxury of failing with no penalty.
if you RTFA, you'll see plenty of microsoft Bob.
Then of course, this is slashdot...
er .. so, like any other company, some of their ventures fail, while some others work. What's the news here? And what's it got to do with the cash balance - apart from showing that they are smart enough not to blow the whole wad on some silly idea?
and 3 of them ask "What about Microsoft Bob?"
The article says:
"More than 100 products were launched in rapid succession over 18 months, from childhood creativity (Fine Artist) to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses)."
I know this can be misconstrued as karma whoring, but I think it's more of a Geraldo-style expose on why RTFAing is necessary.
GEOS: The first windowed OS
I guess if you don't include the Mac, Lisa, and Alto?
Trolling is all relative. It's kind of like a garden, if you want a certain flower in your garden, it stays. Otherwise, it's a weed that sucks the life from the other plants you want growing.
and trying again and succeeding is infinately better than the Linux software development philosophy of trying and failing and failing and failing (goto 10)...
You mean like .net?
No need to RTFA Microsoft fail it!
So you just searched the article for bob instead of reading it? Holy shit.
Sounds like Microsoft to me. So what was the point of that last sentence?
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
It is really interting to read about Microsoft Flops.. Although I had been using Linux as a main OS for 6 years, I have to say that there are a number of failiars that the Open Source (Free software, what ever) community faced in the past years as well.. what counts is how did they get over it, and pass it. Microsoft (Although I generally disagree with thier policies) had been successful in letting things go behind them, and move forward, while I still hear people in the OSS talk about Coral Linux and other failed OSS based projects.. Move on
"This would be +99 Flamebait."
He's got a point. Microsoft has gone and done a lot of things, not everything was a success.
I guess this story does sever an overlooked purpose, though. It proves that MS can't just go an take over aything it wants. The market has to decide it wants the product. I remember all the jabber here about the XBOX before it was released and how MS was going to take over the game market next. My favorite was somebody seriously thinking MS was going to port Office to the XBOX and all'd be over, heh.
I agree with parent poster, though, I think most are going to see this as an opportunity to make fun of MS instead of illuminating themselves to the idea that MS can't take over anything it damn well pleases.
"Derp de derp."
what's with this M$ bashing! This is slashdot! Microsoft knows of no failure! We love microsoft!
oh we don't? errr... hmmmmm... D'OH!
Now, why would failures "be swept under the rug"? Failures are abandoned projects, never-finished products, non-sellers, etc... They are simply left behind, not hidden.
There's a famous cliche that says "If you never fail, you are not taking enough risks." As a business person and someone who has failed several times before getting it right, I can tell you the saying is true. If you dislike failure, then go into business.
In other words, what the hell is your point?
"...to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses."
Of course, like any big company, Microsoft is not a monolith.....
Yes, but they do have a heart of stone.
Looks Like Troll Microsoft Day.
You people are viewing the articles with an email client!? That could explain a lot..
Ahh yes, I loved the commodore! One fun thing that me and a few other friends have done was overclock the C64 to a whopping 1 mhz, approx. we had to use a deep freeze, that thing got hot after a while! I think I have pictures somewhere.....
I am full of goo... black evil goo
Please forget not the dire mistake that was clippy and friends!
More like TSP! (Thirty-Seventh Post!)
The nerve of Microsoft to want people to not think about their failures and only focus on success'. After all, so many other companies have been perfect in all their products. And who wants innovation anyway (yeah, I know, M$ doesn't really "innovate" anyway). Better to stay tried and true and realize that it's better to limp along with mediocrity than to go out on a limb and fail.
/.'ers need to go out and get a life and gain some perspective.
Actually, I think the topic is intersting, as in genuinly interesting to see the things that they've tried and failed at. Those things they tried and failed and tried and failed and eventually succeeded (with Windows being the most obvious example). And obviously some attempts were quite humerous, but to turn this into a "gee see how much M$ really sucks" is just lame and shows how much some
Windows wouldn't be windows if MS would've stayed with IBM and OS/2.
-- Leeeter than leet
in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history."
Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.
This being Slashdot, people will say that the reason Microsoft is so big is because of its monopoly position, but that is a (rather silly) chicken and egg argument. They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
The first time I ever got to the Easter Egg in Excel:
"My God, it's full of stars."
And I am sure that Windows 2025 will periodically lock me out of my house and try to kill me with my robotic lawn mower.
Like all business they made mistakes when tyring something new. However on their core business they have provided a wide spread, realtivly easy to use concurrent platform with Office + Windows. If you look at all OSS office sweets etc they all at least try to read/write M$ Office as it is a standard. Not saying its a good one but its a standard
Bob in Marketing can send Maggie in Accounts a spreadsheet and be able to read it. Thats gotta count for something
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
selling hardware at a loss to make money on software. a couple of years from now, will this be "a great strategy allowing MS to break into the highly competitive console market", or "a flawed business model MS arrogantly thought it could throw money at as with other markets" ???
It's not the Seattle Weekly's job to point out Microsoft's failures ... that's a job for Slashdot!
Regardless of how much money MS may lose on the hardware, the XBox is an unqualified success in the videogame market. Last I checked, it was still outselling Nintendo's GameCube.
Watching Microsoft explore new technology markets is like watching King Kong battling airplanes atop the Empire State Building. To win, the airplanes need to be lucky with every shot. King Kong only needs to be lucky once.
HTML email, another of MS's failings. :)
/. had a story a couple days ago about a search engine that would email you the resulting web sites. :)
Although, you never know,
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Jeez! If you keep trying to innovate, you're gonna fail quite a few times. We can learn SO MUCH from our mistakes.
> get tea
No Tea: dropped.
can be best represented by by ....
A really big fucking number
Well, of course the Seattle Weekly would publish something like this - the whole area out there is nothing but a haven for lefty pinko-commie tree-hugging wackos! I say we cut the whole west coast free and let it float away as an island - then our west coast will be the truly freedom-loving capitalist havens like Nevada and Montana...
Wait, Microsoft is near Seattle? OK, scrap that.
What's the point of the original poster? Do ./ readers find Microsoft such a despicable entity that they need to post such articles to remind people that they also fail? May be it was meant as a joke, but still, very poor taste.
For those who hate them so much (they're a business, they are supposed to make money), don't you think one minute any other company in their shoes would have acted differently, including the envious Sun and over zealous Oracle.
The Gates foundation is today the biggest charitable contributer, funded by the founder himself. Sure, it's a tax relief for him, but he didn't have to do it to help researchers in financial terms in finding vaccin to the most common diseases affecting the 3rd world in the first place. Thats $10 bill available for worthy causes.
Instead, it's hotter nerdy news to point out the failures of Microsoft as a company. Since when did we become so negative about the good things that's happening in this world?
Microsoft made a huge deal on Hail Storm when they announced it a couple of years ago. Then they very quietly declared it "dead" this Spring.
You mean Microsoft may actually be working to skew news coverage and public opinion towards the things they've been successful at? And away from technical and marketing blunders?
What an outrage! I'm going to write to my representatives right now and demand a new law that forces companies to educate consumers about both their strengths and weaknesses, and that requires them to spend an equal amount on publicizing past failures as they do on promoting new initiatives.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. What a failure of the market! What an unconscionable series of dirty tricks from Microsoft! How dare they! Hey, does anyone know what the school assembly is about today?
Cheers
-b
Did anyone ever buy a Microsoft Cordless Phone? I did (with much shame). Everything worked great, the pc answering machine and all, but the receiver was horrible. Couldn't hear a thing even at the highest volume. Swapped it out twice before coming to the conclusion that the receiver just wasn't going to be loud enough to be usable.
Once again, another $100 down the drain. Thanks Bill. BTW, whatever happened to UltimateTV. It was supposed to put TiVo out of business but seemed to only be available for about 6 months.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
I do actually have a copy of the Microsoft Wine Guide sitting on my desk.
I did a double-take when I saw it at the library.
(It's not on Microsoft's site anymore, but the first Google hit was a review of it).
char sig[120] = "\0"
Ha, I like the filename referenced by that link: news-microsoft.php . A rare example of a major news site using PHP, and not a local product, whose makers they're criticizing anyway.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Here is a recent interesting guerrillanews article.
"Let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called ?Foundation.? Gate?s demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called ?TRIPS? ? the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him a monopoly that the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices. "
And I mean that literally. When Windows first came out it was a piece of crap. But they have so much money that they can afford for a technology to do terribly for years until a market is built up, the technology gets better (like to version 3), and all the competitors burn through cash and fall by the wayside.
We laugh at stuff like Tablet PC, Microsoft Reader, XBox or WebTV, but look at some of the "sucesses" of Microsoft and you can realize they had several years of an early period where they sucked, too. Namely, Windows, Pocket PC, Internet Explorer. Just a few years ago, it was thought a foregone conclusion Netscape and Palm owned the market and Microsoft lost.
Microsoft Word (all borrowed ideas) introduced in 84 and a dog for years.
Multiplan? horrible, ridiculous, destroyed by the much more innovative 123
followed by Excel which limped for years till Lotus dropped the ball with 123 in Win3.0
Windows 1, 2, and 386
LAN Manager
SQL Server, a dog for years and years
their internet "strategy": wow, were they late to the game, and oh, what a visionary Gates was to completely miss it.
what many people don't realize is that in the early days the company was much more driven by Paul Allen's ideas than by Bill Gates's. BASIC, Softcard, and buying DOS from SCP, those were Allen's ideas.
When I was working at a software store we got one of the Barney's in. We used to cover up the eyes of Barney for a few mintues at a time just to hear the complaints that he would start saying.
Where did you go?
I can't see you.
I'm scared of the dark.
Let's play another game!
Cheap laughs at Barney's expense. We never did sell the thing though.
I agree with parent poster, though, I think most are going to see this as an opportunity to make fun of MS instead of illuminating themselves to the idea that MS can't take over anything it damn well pleases.
:)
And just because something is a failure shouldn't be taken that the technology is inherently useless. The first companies with MANY technologies screwed them up quite well. Others had the wrong timing, or aimed them at the wrong markets, or had just a few things wrong that didn't allow for success. Witness the Newton - mostly good, but not everything worked in its favour.
Apple have fucked up some things, so have IBM... hell, I hear even SCO have made the odd silly decision
My copy of Mozilla is so good when you search 'bob' it found 'a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic' as a match.
I think Microsoft realizes that while they have two cash cows (Windows and Office), there is only so much that they can do with those things, and are trying to make sure that they can remain profitable with other products. It's just that nobody really knows what that may be until it is already profitable and too late to "get in early". Not all of their ideas are that horrible, though they do have a tendency to lose money on them. I don't use any of their products (Yay for FreeBSD, linux and OS X), but I can't fault them for trying out new ones like any other company would do.
Let us not forget the iLoo, Microsoft's crappiest idea yet.
Anything even remotely smacking of anti-MS bigotry gets a real opportunity to get front-page space here. Especially with certain "editors"...
Stop sitting around being bitter, shaking your head and snickering derisively over every MS press release. Emulate what they're doing right, improve upon it, and look at where the wreckage is to avoid their mistakes. Build a better mousetrap, stop whining about the mousetrap you keep seeing on the shelves. You know why it's on so many shelves? Because for Most of Us, it works. Put down your $6 chai drink, do it better and stop bitching.
what about Mrs Bob?
oh wait she went on to make min-Bobs with Bill Gates..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
What's MSFT? Failures? What's this all about? Oh, sorry, wrong site, I thought I was in an exotic tropical fish board!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Here are some of the funny jokes you might get to hear:
1)
"What time is it?"
"I don't know, my watch just blue-screened, it must be running TEH WINDOWZE"
2)
"Johnny just got Doom III, let's go check it out on his computer."
"Is it going run? He's using Windows XP"
3)
"Want to try "
" Do I have to boot into Windows? I hate doing it." (actually, some of the editors have gone for this in actual article headlines)
4)
Any scenario involving a computer freezing at a presentation/workshop:
scenario a, using windows: "HAHA, WINDOWS IS TEH SUCKS."
scenario b, using linux: "HAHA, DID YOU INSMOD WINDOWS???"
The list goes on and on. I wish people would get over it. Yes, Linux is now somewhat usable for a normal human being that doesn't want to invest 4 hours reading up 4 tree levels deep of manpages. Yes, Linux is stable. Why can't you just be happy with this and enjoy yourself?
Can you imagine Luddites visiting a place with a loom 20 years later and going "Your sweater didn't turn out right? I guess your loom froze!! HAHAHAHA" This is how I feel every time I see this sentiment on Slashdot.
You can make almost as many mistakes as you can afford. And Microsoft is a big honkin' monopoly. That Windows cash cow can fund ten thousand Bobs per year if it needs to.
Uh, the 6510 CPU in the C64 normally operated at 1 Mhz. You could get it to doublespeed (2 Mhz) by simply switching off the video driver through code.
Yeah, that Barney... we had one at the office for a few weeks. Near-universal reaction was "this thing is evil".
Did anyone ever succeed in h4x0r1ng one? We were thinking that if we reverse-engineered some of the protocols, we could get a bunch of them to talk to each other and do evil Skynettish things, but our "project" never got past the "that'd be cool in a sick sort of way" stage.
But does it run Lunix?!
Here's O'Reilly's take... it's kind of quick, though:
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You are a terrorist! Cut his mic! Cut his mic! Shut up! Shut up! Shut your mouth! Shut up!
of course it's taken out of context. This is
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
C=64 was native at 1MHz. If you're going to attempt to be funny, at least fact-check.
Urban Detail
remember "push" technology? channels all over my desktop. just what i always wanted. this was the big thing with IE4 and netscape 4 just had to copy it. this is innovation?
Microsoft it not afraid to lose millions on random attempts at gaining market share. They can keep trying and trying until they succeed, and drive other companies out of business. If they fail, oh well. Lessons learned and try again.
"Yet Microsoft has trouble whenever it tries to grow outside of this core competency"
Is competency really the correct word to use here?
I think all companies have large amounts of failures, or actually one big one.
The thing is they don't want it to look bad, so they don't cut their losses, but keep throwing money into it, hoping it will catch on. When it doesn't they lose even more.
I think it's expected that things won't catch on, and some things just sounded better than they actually were.
What does this say for their prized "Microsoft Innovation" however.
GeekWares - Buy and Download Today!
Sure Maggie can read that spreadsheet... assuming she has the same or newer version of Excel... and that she has all the (virus friendly) macros turned on... and that she has the Toolpack Addins installed.
I used to do support for a large number of purely office users (business office managers, secretaries, etc). I was always fielding questions as to why they couldn't open one person's document or why another person couldn't open theirs. This was at a large public university, so funds weren't just growing on trees; therefore we couldn't just upgrade everytime MS did. Also, with every upgrade there are some tool/method/appearance changes; this means that Maggie has to relearn how to do her special tasks (not all of them, but some).
It just felt to me that with every Office upgrade, MS tried to do something dramatically different (as opposed to just fixing bugs or giving speed increases). And when you have a large number of users set in their ways (working nicely and efficiently), changing them on a regular basis is not a good idea.
IANAL, but I play one on
Can you imagine Luddites visiting a place with a loom 20 years later and going "Your sweater didn't turn out right? I guess your loom froze!! HAHAHAHA" This is how I feel every time I see this sentiment on Slashdot.
How about... "Your sweater didn't turn out right? HAHA! Maybe your Loom Activation Key expired!"
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'm betting the XBox and the various side projects associated with it (XBox Live! and the whole home entertainment center strategy) will be Microsoft's highest profile failure in a year or two.
When Sony publishes their next generation video game console and starts putting some serious effort into their home entertainment center strategy, it's going to be game over for M$. I have absolutely no doubts about that.
XBox sales, both hw and sw, are lagging way behind projections, as are XBox Live! subscriptions. M$ is losing an arm and a leg on XBox and the losses are growing, not going down quarter to quarter. Some analysts are estimating losses on XBox to reach $1.7B by the end of 2003.
They can not sustain this for that much longer, even if they are swimming on money.
And I'm speaking as an owner of an XBox system (I know, I should be ashamed for buying M$).
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Read the The Road Ahead.
Boy, this is easier then it looks.
Quote : Microsoft's fate might be as tied to personal computers as IBM's was tied to mainframes.
IBM's fate wasn't sealed by the death of mainframes, they have adapted quite well to the current marketplace conditions in my opinion. I'm not sure that microsoft will fare as well if its desktop monopoly fades, its made far too many enemies...
In linux libertas
We don't mention his name around here...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I don't know if people remember, but before Access was a database, it used to be Microsofts answer to Crosstalk/Smarterm and the ilk (dialup communications). They scuttled the project and later resurected the name for the database.
The thing that separates America from some of the numerous runners-up is the willingness to try, and the ability to blow-off failure, coupled with a system which permits people to try to do things without crushing them in regulation and beaurocracy. As other countries like China liberalize their rules, the system begins to work there too. When countries like France saddle new efforts with too many unions, permits, requirements, regulations, their economy suffers (I'm not talking about the effects of the embargo, look at the problems they were having before that). One of the great things about this country is that we have some requirements which only apply when companies get to a certain size and can withstand their cost. If you want to learn where wealth comes from, you should observe the different systems different countries/communities have. Some enable the activities which generate wealth, some hinder it, to varying degrees.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
Microsoft's Talisman initiative also failed miserably. Talisman presentation: http://research.microsoft.com/MSRSIGGRAPH/96/Talis man. The now defunct 3Dfx Voodoo totally kicked its ass.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
If your failures land you in court, you can take satisfaction that you've joined an elite crowd...
King Kong died. He fell off his perch and fell very
fast. He then proceeded to mess up a bunch of road
and create a traffic hazard. That and the Federal
Gov't wasn't looking the other way when King Kong
did his thing.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
This comment contained copyrighted text and was removed at the request of the copyright owner.
Afaik they were deep into some long forgotten 8Bit Homecomputerstandard called MSX which only was successful in Japan for some time.
Actually, Netscape deserves the blame for HTML email.
Sometimes Barney Starts Playing Peekaboo on His Own
the rebellion", but R. E. Lee was smarter than that....
How many of you have stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg,
PA and thought how over 50,000 men died due to the policies
of one leader. How many of you are aware of the crimes
against humanity (as we now call them) done in his name
and with him as Commander In Chief? For example,
burning farms, businesses, and homes plus raping the
women from Atlanta to Savannah and in the Shenandoah
valley.
And we build a monument to him and name tanks after his
generals. Many STILL suffer from his policies.....
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
What's is a failure shouldn't be able to the OSS office aide, and failed at least we know the hopes people are not hidden. There's a famous cliche that forces companies get mentioned a good one punch. Although, you are recycled from its monopoly if they have acted differently, including the posibilty that'll it'l send men in finding a better OS to give you will this sentiment on something is just lame in Montana... Wait, Microsoft has failed several times before it does not intending to the ones they likely to collectors everywhere due the two - YOU FAIL IT! Until this sentiment on a haven for it better to limp along with MANY technologies that field isn't computing, and enjoy yourself?
... and the X Window System, and Digital GEM, and IIRC the Apple IIgs also had some sort of windowed interface that was similar to whatever that GUI BIOS is (Phoenix?).
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
2 Mhz was only on the C= 128 and the 40 column video switched off for that. The 80 column video worked just fine at 1 Mhz and 2 Mhz. If you switched off the C= 64 video you got a small boost, but it wasn't even close to double. The number that sticks in my head is some where between 5-15%. And the processor speed never actually increased. I think it just stopped getting interupts from the video chip, until you told it to turn back on.
... that darn' evil M$oft; trust them to be truly evil and stupid and hide their stupid and evil mistakes. I knew there was a reason I didn't like them.
Why I ought'a ... switch to that there Lee-nux them there hippies keep squak'n 'bout ...
Darn' tootin'
http://www.techtv.com/news/newsbriefs/story/0,2419 5,3387048,00.html
.NET - IT departments are starting to realise what .NET is all about and fleeing in droves. A year ago you'd get them asking if you'd be supporting .NET and hoping the answer was "yes", now they're asking about .NET and hoping the answer is "no".
Young Mr. Lincoln saved those Clay boys and proved that it was John Palmer Cass that did the stabbing.
If that wasn't an innovative use of the Farmer's Almanac to prove it couldn't have been moon bright, I don't know what is!
You failed at failing me :(
So I succeeded?
/. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
a lot of other companies start projects that fail, but probbably MS's get a lot more media coverage and publicity, since they are so huge. Also MS has a tendency to boast about new products and projects like there's no tomorrow. I guess they coined the term vaporware for a long time.
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
There are always two sides. I'm pretty sure that you could go on like that about any leader in history. By leading one bunch of people, the leader hurts another bunch.
After all, wasn't America founded on a revolution?
In order to interpret the article I must rely on my core views. I have only three rules I live by: 1) Never trust someone elses' conclusions. 2) Never tell anyone everything you know.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I've seen several people comment about Microsoft Bob... If you don't know of, or don't remember MS BOB, check out http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html
Also the rest of this site is quite entertaining....
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
Oh how quickly they forget. MSX? Windows 1.0? MS Xenix? The not-so-compatible 1980s MS-DOS Compatibles? The list goes on and on...
Da Blog
Don't forget MSN. Didn't it start out as an attempt to build a proprietry internet , seperated from the real thing and would only be accessable through Windoze boxes?
Abe wrote his own speeches.
Abe started out poor and had to work for everything he got.
Abe worked hard to educate himself.
Abe was never saved again and again and again from repeated business failures by friends/supplicants to his family.
Abe was forced by circumstances into military action, designed to save the country.
Abe was elected President.
No matter what failures, mistakes, screwups they've had, we're still stuck with them and they still win.
The average person could not care less about Linux or any other alternative. Bottom line is they want to play solitaire or write email or look at family photos. Did you really care about the OS on your Commodore 64 or did you want to play games on it when you were a kid (this is directed at typical people, not uber-geeks).
I hate MS and everything they stand for, but I still make a better living on Windows machines than I ever did on Linux machines.
Sorry, sad, but true.
But I do know people who like the sound of fingernails on a blackboard - which is pretty close to Clippy.
as long as there is /.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Microsoft completely missed the boat on the low-cost Intel server bandwagon. After 10 years of Windows NT technology (yeah, it's built into W2K and XP too), Microsoft has failed to gain even an appreciable share in the Intel server market.
Microsoft has been saying for years that Windows NT/2000/XP is an alternative to UNIX, and later Linux, but their attempt to penetrate the UNIX market has been an abject failure. I think Microsoft is slowly starting to realize that catchy phrases like "Enterprise Class Computing" and "Mission Critical" don't fool the UNIX crowd.
Granted, I'm not trying to troll, but it seems to me that UNIX and mainframe folks have a much different expectation of reliability and uptime than Microsoft, and Microsoft has been slow in realizing this. At this point, the reliability of WinXP is inconsequential; Microsoft has been so successful on the desktop that they will be forever known as a desktop vendor. When people think of Microsoft, they think of butterflies and games and multimedia - not exactly the images one wants to associate with their "mission critical server" vendor. This, combined with their hostile attitude toward UNIX and the open source philosophy practically gaurantees that Microsoft will never be accepted as anything more than a toy by the UNIX crowd.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Whoever that wrote this probably don't know much about managing a business. In any business, you have to take risks. The difference between a sucessful business and one that is not, is being able to calculate your risks by recognizing its cost and profit. MS's "failure" maybe more apparent because the dollar amount they invest on pushing out a product is more than a small company's entire budget. But that's just scaling. Any company will find some of its investment a hit, and some are miss. You can list all the battles MS has lost in, but I think in the end MS has won the war (ie. it is successful in overall).
The fact that MS has the infrastructure to invest in so many areas of the market and the backing to take some losts is a sign of a successful company.
I disaprove of MSFT business practices as much as anybody. But I am in awe of msft's financial success.
Can anybody name as very successful company that has never made any big mistakes?
Add .NET/C# to the list of Microsoft failures. C#, reminds of J++ or whatever they had for a while. What a failure that was.
At least we don't have to worry about this kind of marketing from MS today...oh wait. Nevermind.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
And ending slavery is about as good an example I can think of.
And which "one leader" are you talking about? Jefferson Davis? Or the leader of the SC troops who fired on Ft Sumter?
bollocks. xbox live has smashed projections and MS has the highest game-attach rate of any modern console.
Xbox is not a failure. KOTOR has been selling like hot cakes since its release last week. MS has come into an industry dominated by sony and already displaced nintendo in the US for the #2 spot. MS has the #1 online system for consoles after less than a year.
Sony is slowly recalling their previous PS3 hype and backpedalling on all their statements about PS3. Thats the penalty for cranking out hype way ahead of itme ot try and buy time to make something real. It worked to kill the dreamcast, but it wont work with xbox.
(see also: PS3 WONT have the Cell chip in it)
Xbox will probably not beat PS2 for this generation, but i do expect it to reach parity. PS3 vs XBox2 is a level playing field, IMO.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Lots of people have said this already, but failure is a part of life. Being able to pick up the pieces and persist is what seperates the great and/or successful from the mediocre. Read up sometime about Milton Hershey Prior to founding Hershey, the candy company, he went bankrupt at least once, and started several other failed companies. The part that made him successful was his persistence and drive to succeed. After his many failures, he eventually had success and established one of the largest corporations the world has seen.
They failed to take out Don Corleone not once but twice.
I know people who swear by the latest MS press release. Until MS releases a product a genre is uninteresting and after - how could you live without it. These people do not believe Microsoft has failures.
I don't think many of them read slashdot.
Having an article published by a paper gives me better ammo.
of course not! windows is a microkernel
... do you find some piece highlighted on the main page--from the Seattle Weekly no less, which, like the L.A. Weekly and O.C. Weekly and the Village Voice and all the others, doesn't even shy away from its position as a liberal ass-kissing RAG--that says "Everybody! Just remember! Microsoft fails all the time!"
...) Goooo Linuuuux, Goooo Linuuuuux ...
What's annoying about this isn't even the content of the story. It's that by posting it, it sort of confirms, or seems to confirm, that Microsoft has its foot firmly up everyone's ass. I mean, Slashdot posts a story that reminds us of how Microsoft actually, while sitting on billions, is really prone to failure?
Uh. Okay. (Now chant in sheep-like monotone
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Is the the ball-less IntelliMouse Optical mouse specifically designed for Unix programmers?
Yet Another Assknob Discovers Microsoft Bob
Really, is there another point to this stupid story?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
What's sad is you probably actually believe the garbage you posted.
The fucking pathetic delusional life of a hardcore MS fanboy.
LOSER.
Here is a list
MS did not invent optical mouse/ aa0414 98.htm
read these
Steve Kirsch
My Life History On One Page
http://skirsch.com/misc/stklife.html
Of Mice and More Mice
http://peripherals.about.com/library/weekly
I am still searching for somebody who has reverse engineered the Actimates Teletubbies, a related product.
The Teletubbies are available really cheap now on eBay and the junk market, if you find one that's soiled and unsuitable for a child.
The Actimates Teletubbies have an 8x10 matrix of dual color (infinite colors if you use PWM to mix the two) LEDs in it. I've gutted one and the LED matrix is proprietary but seems simple enough. The Teletubby runs on an H8 processor. I'd like to reverse engineer the display board, which has a low-pins connector, and figure out how to drive the thing with a PIC. The display board has no 'smarts' on it, nothing more than a few drive transistors, so it should be a fairly easy task. But I haven't seen a 'dissecting Actimates Teletubbies' page yet describing it all.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Welcome, user, to the Microsoft Bob Historical Society!
If ever there was an idea that was doomed from the start, it has to be Microsoft Bob. That name. It just doesn't sound right.
Must-not-watch TV!
Last year they paid a dividend for the first time in history in anticipation of the largest deficit increase^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H tax cut in history. Corporations didn't want the dividend cut that Bush proposed as it benefits shareholders but not the Corps. The Administration pressured the corps to get behind this deal or never get another break from them (Bush administration)again.
When you say "Windows", I assume you mean to include products like ISA Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and so on, dozens of similar applications... Like it or not, some idiots are happy with these products...
Good article up to the last paragraph. Microsoft should strive to be much more like IBM, but it has waited far to long to start. IBM has a huge patent portfolio which they have been a lot more judicious in enforcing than SCO for example. They are also better diversified into the "service" sector. Microsoft has a consulting division, but they are only geared toward helping to sell Microsoft solutions, they quickly show themselves to be nothing more than technical sales reps.
Microsoft has put it's name on mice and keyboards. Very clever, but they don't make anything. Behind IBM's outsourced hardware is a still viable manufacturing and fabrication operation (again, more fundamental research going on here). You might think of IBM as Microsoft, Dell, and Intel all rolled into one. Each of these companies can succeed or fail based on one or two key product lines. IBM became a true corporation a long time ago. Dell and Microsoft are still the product of individuals, with all the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.
How about the years of mental frustration over fear of losing my data? Blue screen crashes twice a day will drive anyone nuts. It's 2 years+ later now after running Mandrake all this time I am starting to feel like storing my important data on my system is a good idea.
Lawsuit! Mental distress!
There was a Nike commercial that ran a little while ago with Michael Jordan saying:
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
I have no more love for MS and what they do and how they do it than anyone else here, but no one ever accomplishes very much without repeated failures along the way.
They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
No, they were an IBM-granted monopoly.
The "chicken-and-egg" problem isn't a problem, because they got to be a monopoly by exploiting the hobbyist nature of the beginning of the personal computer revolution. Microsoft was there from the beginning; and from the beginning, they used other people's code (BASIC for the Altair, for example, which was ported from available sources; the only thing neat and original about that is the way in which it was ported, and Paul Allen was the one doing the heavy lifting).
Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.
Mr. Gates' mother was on the (Red Cross?) board of directors with one of the top execs of IBM. This connection was Microsoft's major break. As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)
Once they sold IBM on the idea, they scampered back to Seattle and purchased outright the proto-DOS from a small Seattle company. Selling price: $10k. The Seattle company knew nothing about the IBM deal. Mr. Gates screwed this company, instead of dealing fairly with them (which would have involved giving him or his company a small stake in all sales of DOS).
(At this point, a bunch of you are screaming, "But they made the deal! It was all fair!" To which I reply, no fucking way was it fair. It was exploitation, and preyed on ignorance, which is about as moral as taking sexual advantage of a mentally handicapped person. Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity.)
So, with IBM's legitimacy, and Microsoft's ownership of of MS-DOS and a deal to ship this DOS with every PC, Microsoft began its PC life with the monopoly on desktop operating systems.
When the first clones came out, Compaq should have also cloned the OS; ironically, though they weren't willing to pay royalties on the IBM BIOS, they were willing to pay for the OS.
Those in control of Microsoft have made very cunning deals. But, yes, they *did* start off in a monopoly position of a very small market, and grew as the market grew.
But, *completely* off-topic, let me pose this question: if Microsoft has proven it will not play fairly with other businesses (that Seattle company wasn't even a competitor at the time, but a potential partner), why should we expect them to play fairly with their customers if they don't have to?
Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.
Hardly. Their willingness to fuck over anyone and everyone in pursuit of market dominance is the reason they are at the top of the software heap.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
A friend who was at MS had an 'unofficial' SDK which allowed him to hack his Barney to do what he wanted :-)
"For those who hate them so much (they're a business, they are supposed to make money), don't you think one minute any other company in their shoes would have acted differently, including the envious Sun and over zealous Oracle."
./ readers find Microsoft such a despicable entity that they need to post such articles to remind people that they also fail? May be it was meant as a joke, but still, very poor taste."
Well I'm a mugger. Please be quiet as I drag you behind this dumpster.
"Instead, it's hotter nerdy news to point out the failures of Microsoft as a company. Since when did we become so negative about the good things that's happening in this world?"
Well on a positive note. Iraq is getting a new phone system.
" What's the point of the original poster? Do
You mean they don't? Damn talk about a surprise. Successful people don't fail. They experience "minor setbacks".
"Xbox wrested the No. 2 video-game console position (behind Sony PlayStation 2) from Nintendo's GameCube in the U.S. and Europe and has sold more than 9.4 million consoles worldwide--more than forecast." From the article.
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html
Glad it failed...
From a pure UI point of view:
Gnome is apple like. The way the application bars work is more logical, and flows better (or woudl if it wasn't so slow)
KDE is windows like. It definately wants to be like windows.
Of course, KDE is a lot faster and smoother overall.. soy ou be the judge.
Apple isn't that pissy about aqua knock offs. They were concerned about brand recognition for their new OS.. that's all. The usability and UI design of the Mac goes far beyond the color and shape of some buttons.
There is a huge difference in ease of use for a new user between the UI in windows and the mac.. they are not just two different variations of the same thing.. the apple interface is very well researched, they understand how people naturally try to use things, how your attention flows.....
Microsoft does not. Their interface is not BAD, there are certainly far worse.. but they really don't get it as far as real UI design.
are a good thing for Microsoft. They make lousy operating systems and they keep corrupting their otherwise decent office applications with more and more bloat, much of it as a result of tightening integration with their operating systems.
IMO they do need to find something else that they can do well, especially something that won't be corrupted by delusions of granduer from their operating system division. With all the different things they try their hand at, they may actually stumble on to something profitable before their operating system revenue vanishes in competiton with superior operating systems. This and the revenue stream from their office products (apparently bloat and continuous forced obscelence don't bother other people as much as they do me) are strong arguments against the idea of selling their stock short.
And it takes a monopoly to be able to survive such stunning blunders like missing the emergence of something as powerful as the internet.
Without MS monopolistic cash income stream they would have suffered serious blows screwing up like they have. That is why I wish that part of the settlement MS would have been prevented them from buying technology but force them to "innovate" from scratch and compete.
Check out the extension of that article, and that for a Seattle newspaper! :)
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
...went through several revisions. First was the Pink Screen Of Pain, then the Tangerine Screen Of Torture. It wasn't until several million dollars had been poured into Windows development that the Blue Screen Of Death finally became the norm.
I haven't showered for 11 days - 3 more days and I can install lunix. Can't wait!
As many companies grow, they become risk averse. Employees fear challenging the status quo because they will get smacked down or lose their jobs. Microsoft actively seeks out people who think outside of the norm and aren't afraid to talk about it.
Risk has a price like any other investment, but it is a cost that many companies do not fully appreciate. Microsoft not only understands this value, but breeds it into the corporate culture.
There was a virus, at one point, that rewrote the clippy help vocabulary with insults. I did not want to "cure" that virus, it was hilarious.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
It's a war of attrition, and Microsoft has way more cubic dollars to throw at the Xbox than Nintendo with the Cube. If only for that reason, MS is in a better position to survive than Nintendo. Their attitude is definitely win at any cost. Still, makes you wonder how long they can keep it up.
Edison is not remembered for his biggest projects, which yielded about zero: synthetic rubber, electric automobiles, and his humongous failure on a project to make New Jersey the world's center of the steel industry by extracting iron from local ores.
Well I wasn't convinced until you turned your post into a personal attack on the guy. Now I'm swayed...
Someone mod parent down, -4 would be appropriate. That link is gross, and not appropriate for children or viewing at work.
Most of these botched Microsoft projects were efforts to extend the PC as an entertainment device.
Well, the PC isn't an entertainment device, and trying to make it one is as sensible as trying to turn your TV into a computer just because there are chips inside.
If Microsoft wants to make toys, they should buy a toy company. Otherwise, they should stick to real software.
And, so should Linux.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
No M$ lover me, but surely mistakes are exactly what makes business successful?
For every business idea that takes off, there are always a few that don't. Reading the future is very hard - almost impossible. MS has billions and billions in the bank, meaning it can afford to try and fail - so that it has a steady range of successes. Surely that is a good thing, if you are MS?
Seems to me we should all want to have enough cash to be able to try this "scattershot and some can't fail to stick" approach to business.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Maybe it was a huge blunder for UC not to make people pay for that TCP/IP stack.
California taxpayers might have gotten a little relief.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
What do mean that WASN'T a doll?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This was one of the great sloppy lines of logic on which the trial was built. You might have noticed that Internet Explorer versions 1, 2, and basically 3 were failures, even though they too were bundled with Windows. THis was because they sucked. Microsoft products succeed when they do what customers want.
Many would say he failed at being President.
And we call those so-called 'many' "Inbred White Trash Southerners". Ah, the South: a never-ending pain in the ass of the United States.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one with embarrassing stuff sitting in the Google Groups archive...
REDMOND, WASHINGTON, U.S.A., 1995 MAR 31 (NB) -- Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) Chairman Bill gates has named this "Microsoft Bob Day." Bob is the nerdy looking guy with the black plastic-frame glasses who, according to Microsoft "gives new meaning" to the computer term "user friendly"
Today is Microsoft Bob Day because it is the first day the user interface software of that name will be available in retail outlets. Microsoft hopes every IBM-compatible user in the country will welcome Microsoft Bob into their home and/or office. Bob features animated personal guides that navigate users through Bob's eight applications.
Microsoft may see Bob as a "simpler" user interface, but retailers see it as a sales tool, with several mass market retailers featuring Bob promotions. Sears stores are offering consumers the opportunity to meet Bob via exclusive "technology makeovers." Through April 30, 1995, the national chain is offering a personal consultation to help assess your level of computer knowledge and experience. The consultation is designed to show that with Microsoft Bob's help just about anyone can be a "techno-whiz."
CompUSA is so enamored with Microsoft Bob it will offer two days -- April 29 and 30 -- of Bob demos and promotions in all its retail outlets. "Bob allows us to talk to an even broader mix of customers," said Larry Mondry, CompUSA executive vice president of merchandising.
The underlying philosophy of Microsoft Bob may be "simplicity of use," but it won't run on a simple PC. As a minimum you need Windows 3.1 or higher, a 486 or higher microprocessor, eight megabytes (MB) of memory, 30MB of available hard disk space, a Super VGA 256-color monitor, and a mouse of comparable pointing device. That eliminates many of the PCs in homes and small offices that have 4MB of memory, unless the owner is willing to upgrade. If you want Bob to send your electronic-mail or pay your bills online you will also need a modem. Microsoft also calls a sound card and speakers "recommended options."
Microsoft is banking heavily on Bob's ease of use. As a result there is no manual with the software. Each user can choose one of the animated helpers Bob provides, which include a dog, a cat, "Scuz" the teenager, a parrot, and a "friendly dragon."
Microsoft Bob's opening screen is a red front door with a brass door knocker and your personal animated helper to suggest, through pointing and text messages, where you should go. Interestingly, while the guy with the friendly smile and the heavy glasses is the namesake of the program, he doesn't actually appear in the software.
The eight functions Bob brings to your home or office are a letter writer, calendar, checkbook/financial management program, household manager for managing household information, address book, e-mail, a quiz game called GeoSafari, and a financial guide that provides financial information and tips. The various programs are integrated so you can write a letter and pull in the appropriate address from the address book, then send the letter electronically via e-mail.
Bob may be a gamble for Microsoft. The company hopes users will accept the cartoonish look-and-feel of the program intended to make computing easier, but it remains to be seen if experienced computer users will be attracted to the program.
When Bill Gates introduced Microsoft Bob in January at the Consumer Electronics Show he pointed out that Bob is for both new users and users who have a computer but don't make use of it because it requires too much in the way of learning skills and pouring through manuals. "Using Bob, people will learn faster and easier and even learn more about application features they would not otherwise become familiar with," said Gates.
Bob uses a relatively new user interface technique, called a
Watch what you're saying, this is Slashdot fer chrissakes: Don't go giving them ideas!
Next time I'm watching the news and see an item about short buses being besieged by hordes of slavering geeks, I'll know who to blame...
T&K.
Political language
Here we have a perfect example of fanboyism in its truest form.
Why let facts come before faith...
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Abe didn't fail at reaching the non-military solution, the generations that came before him that created the problems failed. When he was elected president, he did not declare war on the South, but the South declared war on him (Ft. Sumter). Lincoln was not responsible for the lives lost during the Civil War. Every man in the United States (North and South) had an opportunity to fix the rising tensions between the two sides with their ballot and their attitude. They did not, Lincoln fixed their mistakes and restored the union.
Sherman gave ample warning to towns before buldozing them. And sadly, war does involve restless boys who desrie to rape people, but that cannot be considered the leader's fault.
Now I understand that even the greatest men have their flaws (and Abe certainly wasn't the perfect leader), but our nation needs more men willing to fight for justice, and I'm damn proud when I look on the Lincoln memorial.
Microsoft named the initiative "'executing with excellence on multiple fronts' as a key business risk in the discussion of its annual results."
...Microsofts mistakes forget YOU!!!
Actually it seems MS has forggotten most of us anyways.
Well, gee, since Nintendo has been making a profit on every GameCube sold for some time now and their incredible GB sales I guess Nintendo isn't too concerned about 'surviving' now are they?
It is a war of attrition and MS is the only player.
Notice it said "U.S. and Europe" and didn't include Japan. In those two regions it is #2 (barely). When you include Japan sales in the total the Gamecube has a small lead.
Nintendo is a non-factor. They'll die before XBox, for sure. If Sony executes like they did on PS1, their handheld will kill the Gameboy within the next 5 years and Nintendo is gone completely. That's a really big if, though. Gameboy's pretty solid. Gamecube, however...another dissapointment from Nintendo. They haven't had a major success since NES...
The end result of this decade's video game wars is Sony with 75% market share. They will completely dominate.
The fact that PS3 will have a chip FooBar over XBox 2 has nothing do with it. It's business, and as a business Sony is dominating over every competitor right now. If they keep executing as well as they've done for the past few years, there is nobody that can touch them.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Similarly, I was excited about the PS3 because of cell. Now, I'm not excited. The Xbox offers more functionality than the PS2 at the same price point, since it comes with a hard drive, and it's also easier to hack :) I suspect that Xbox2 will be harder to hack, but PS3 will be harder still... Xbox2 will probably still be a PC, thus raising its value to me yet further. And I get pissed off when companies backpedal on their promises. I sold my PS2 a while back, and now I have an Xbox, and I like it more than the PS2. It's a better DVD player, and I like the Xbox controller better than the PS2 controller. (for those with normal or small size hands, the Xbox Controller S really is very nice.)
Microsoft made some vague pronouncements, said they were vague, and then followed through on them. Sony told even more egregious lies about the PS2's graphics capabilities than Microsoft told about Xbox's. Sony is as big a bad guy as Microsoft - Maybe bigger! - and they are a bunch of lying bastards. Let the PS3 rot.
Anyway you're right about Xbox doing amazingly well. Just like Sony came out of nowhere with the Playstation, Microsoft has done the same with Xbox. However, the situation is somewhat reversed. Nintendo contracted Sony to make a product and then burned them on licensing deals, so Sony got into the biz and ate Nintendo's lunch. However Microsoft got into a deal to help Sega with Dreamcast, Dreamcast died the death of a thousand dogs amen, and Microsoft took advantage of the technology transfer to enter the market themselves and attempt to dominate it. The race is now very close between Microsoft and Sony, and the next generation of this battle should be intense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My favorite MS mistake that I have yet to forget is MS backup.
Yes, that horribly unrobust waste of 800k that comes with Windows. In my case, Windows98.
I needed to transfer files from my fiance's old computer from college to her XP desktop. I just loaded up MS Backup in Widows 98, created the handy QIC file across several 3.5" floppies (as there was no NIC or CD-R installed).
What I found amazed me
When trying to restore in XP, I found it couldn't read Win98 backup files! In fact, after reading post after post on the web, I found that ONLY WINDOWS 98 CAN READ QIC BACKUP FILES.
How healpful is this feature? WHY would you provide a backup tool, knowing a primary use for backup is system restore after upgrade, and only have it work on one VERSION of your OS? (recall that Windows XP is just another version of 98, not like trying to, I don't know, open a Word Perfect file with MS Word)
Meanwhile, I own a PowerBook G4
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
[/sarcasm}
The great General Robert Lee was not "smarter than that", but a complex and intelligent thinker who was torn between his strong belief in the importance of preserving the Union of the states, and his loyalty to his family and the State of Virginia. (It is interesting that the person recommending Lee to lead the Union Army was a distant cousin of his, Blair Lee of Mongomery County, Maryland. I guess not every Lee suffered the curse of holding "family honor" in higher regard than the Rights of Man.)
The conflict that started the war was over the Crittenden Proposal, that would have allowed the "Southern States" to preserve the inhuman tradition of slavery without interference from the other states or the federal government. The proposal was defeated in comittee, largely due to the greater representation enjoyed by the predominantly Republican North. What amuses me greatly about this fact is that if the Southern States had allowed thier slaves to vote, and thus be counted for representation, then the South would have greatly outnumbered the North in congress, but then again, if the South had allowed their slaves to vote, I doubt that slavery would even have been a possibility.
Read, L
Yeah, that is intersting.
1. Run unstable then, loser
/.
2. Hurd? I thought you were discussing Linux?
3. Theme it then (And then try to theme windows)
4.
a) It's free as in beer compared to a program few can afford, while still very much better than every other more expensive proprietary gfx program
b) CMYK is never used, unless you're taking it to a printer. If you are, use another program to convert.
c) GIMP is _way_ faster than photoshop
5. So? Mozilla beta aws still more stable than "stable" IE. NT 4.0, five years to reach 5.0 only to be replaced by XP?
6. I suppose you prefer solitaire?
7. Since winmodems suck, average users might buy serials to get decent connection, or any connection at all.
8. So your point is Linux solves existing problems. Won't argue with that.
9. Use truetype then, retard.
10. I don't use gnome, but find it amusing that a MS fanboi complains about fisher price interfaces. Theme gnome then, and then try theming away windows fisher price appearance. Good luck. Regarding filemanagers, I'd rather not have a filemanager with 2" high icons that pop up a wizard everytime I move the mouse, thank you.
11. Use another word processor then. I know it's hard, but linux users are often encouraged to make a choice. I realize the confusion this might instill.
12. Microsoft public relations trying to hype their putrid heap of crap by posting AC on
MS is a Monopolith.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
I remember the first (and last) time I saw MS Bob. It was running on a computer at CompUSA. Really annoying.. I asked the nearest sales guy what he thought of if. "Damned annoying. We can't get it to stop."
I uninstalled it.. He thanked me..
End of line..
as I was saying earlier in the thread . . .
Greg Palast covered this issue thoroughly in the revised for the United States edition of "The Best democracy Money Can Buy". (gregpalast.com)
I dislike MS because so many of their products have been so *shoddy*, unreliable, crashing, poorly documented, anti-standardization, failing to take advantage of technologies that have been well known to the public from years before, bloated and slow. The one questionable business/marketing tactic of theirs that does annoy me is that each version of their popular products is deliberately incompatible with previous versions in ways that force you to upgrade if you're going to keep communicating with other users. Some examples are naming the "Program Files" directory in a way that broke all previous well-behaved software installation programs, forcing software vendors to either dual-version or only support the newer OS, and making each version of Word have something that makes new-version documents usually fail on old Word versions and old documents get weird things done to them on new versions.
On the other hand, there were the MS Barney Dolls, which were so over-the-top evil that you just had to admire them....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Survival Research Labs does shows of large robots bashing each other up, with fire, much crashing and bending of metal, etc. They did a show near my office back in the boom (rented a parking lot under the freeway). One of their destructive robots had a MS Barney on top. I don't know if he was animated or just duct-taped on, but he was both a Hood Ornament of Evil and a good target for the other robots.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Man, so thats how MCSE's flooded the job market??? Send me my free complimentary slashdot certified MCSE!!!
Too much of the mass press fawns all over every Microsoft product or technology pronouncement as though it's indicative of the Second Coming.
Part of the reason is that general assignment reporters (especially in TV) frequently don't know better -- they don't know the history or the industry. Another reason is that some reporters who depend upon access to Microsoft for news are afraid to lose that access by being outright negative without attributing it to someone else.
Reminders that Microsoft can fail, has failed and continues to fail are good for critical consumer thought. That is: Don't buy that new gadget just because it has Microsoft's name on it. They don't always get it right.
On the other hand, Microsoft failing and trying again isn't indicative of the company being a failure. They have succeeded (that is, been profitable) at some things outside of Windows and Office and keep trying to push that limit back even more. But there's a fine line between knocking on opportunity's door and banging your head against the wall repeatedly.
I woulda thunk they would have learned their lesson from n64 (doesn't play CD's), but, no ... gamecube doesn't play DVD's.
I hope a few people at Microsoft will glance at this, but more than likely they won't, or will and can't change a thing.
I completely dislike windows. I don't consider it worthy of much more than solitare, however, I like Microsoft applications, they are well put together, have great functionality and work well. Wine wouldn't be where it's at now if this wan't true. MicroSoft's strength is solid applications.
If Microsoft were to ditch their operating system completely on the desktop and spec a GNU/Linux or FreeBSD OS to be assembled by system integrators it would be a leap forward, no one cares about the operating system, it's the applications. The OS only comes into play when it repeatedly crashes, when explorer crashes, when odd programs cause the whole OS to freak out, or buggy drivers lead you to the BSOD.
XP is buggy as hell, I can push an XP system in the wrong way and get it to crash quickly, in some cases faster than Win2K.
Microsoft should port their apps to some sort of VM instruction set and make a VM for each operating system out there. We all know windows would run it faster, I really don't care, I need reliablity. Give me both and Redmond will get my cash, and my client's cash as well.
Until then OpenOffice gets better every release, X gets better every release and Gnome and KDE are both headed in the right direction, there may soon be no need for MicroSoft at all if this continues.
Their downfall will be Billy G's arrogance.
I assume she's hot, because if she isn't Bill Gates kids are going to be Fugly. He may be a genius but he is one freakish looking dude. I guess your business acumen can be directly correlated with your social standing with regards to hot women. Since Bill's only hope in hell to get laid by anyone other than an expensive hooker, was to become Dr. Evil, I mean the richest man in the world.
If I were the richest man in the world... I'd reenact that island scene in Pirates of the Carribean with whoever that hot girl was (except there would be a love scene and air conditioned tents).
Like the guy who ran the stock portfolio in Wired, selling Microsoft just before the release of Windows95, predicting it would be a failure.
Xbox is a success. Not a huge one yet, and if I was Sony, I would be shit-scared.
I think it will be a long time before Microsoft has a massive failure that threatens the existence of the company. Bill Gates will probably be dead before that happens.
Opensource may well take it's toll on them, but it will be 10-20 years before it starts to really hurt them, and if there is one thing we know about them it's that they don't stand still waiting for competitors get a leg up.
Posted by an Anonymous Coward. Go figure.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
"If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."
- Thomas Watson President of IBM during it's heyday.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Edison, when asked about the lack of progress on his lightbulb experiments
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never to have tried to succeed."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
- Abraham Lincoln
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
- Colin Powell
"Victory belongs to the most persevering."
- Napolean Bonaparte
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
- Bill Cosby
I'd like to say I can't believe this nonsense article was posted. But this is slashbot, where the OSS community wallows in their failures rather than learning from them.
The first (DOS) Microsoft Access program was a terminal emulation/communication package (intended to be similar to pcAnywhere, etc.), which flopped big time........ So they reused the name (and buried the failure) for their Windows database product.
Talk to Netscape, they initiated that particular atrocity - and to add insult to injury, they created HTML Usenet postings to go with it.
Slashdot, that bastion of anti-MS sentiment, runs articles about .NET, and reviews about .NET books. This is because .NET is and will be the standard development environment for the foreseeable future. You don't need that much advertising, you just become sort of invisible because everyone uses you by default. And it isn't like the advertising has stopped either: I still see Visual Studio .NET ads on Slashdot.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I don't understand the big deal over Clippy. A right-click->Hide and he's gone forever. It was the first thing I turned off.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Do you realize just how successful those "few successful products" really are? That's what investors care about. Everything else is just grabs for marketshare.
"Sufferin' succotash."
nd I know that Tom Hanks will walk out of any interview that mentions Busom Buddies.
If it weren't for Busom Buddies, the only line Hanks would have is: "Do you want fries with that?"
See subject.
"Sufferin' succotash."
As long as they have their MS tax on computers and government contracts, they have no worries.
The MS genius is to make the business college OFFICE tools course a standard that small businesses insist on. They have done this by the CITRIX server partner pedaling MS NT for so long and their bullshit teaching accreditation system that has become the only standard for business intranet. By concentrating on small fish for years they have actually started to make ignorant MS cert. IT guys think their software can scale to internet server levels, and scientific application levels. You notice however the conspicuous lack of supercomputing tech with NT and its derivatives!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
The reason why Microsoft is still around is that the company is still taking risks. So what if there are a bunch of failed products in the Microsoft catalog? It's evidence of something that many people don't like to admit: Microsoft is innovative. Some of the innovations don't work, but many its efforts succeed and, at least to date, more than make up for its failures.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
No, OS/2 up to version 2.0 was jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM. It was released under both the IBM and Microsoft brands, so you had MS OS/2 and IBM OS/2 which were essentially the same product. Google, or look at a boot screen or some promotional material.
It's third out of three and it's losing money? For the immediate future, this is a failure. Maybe in the future it won't be, but just because you got an F English in 6th grade and an A in 7th, doesn' tmean you didn't fail 6th grade english.
Umm no it won't, It's also is losing to the Gamecube.
[Microsoft] are beating the [Game]cube by a huge amount in North America and Europe.
Yeah, and the Nintendo Game Boy Advance is outselling Microsoft's handheld gaming platform, partly because Microsoft's platform 1. is too expensive per unit and 2. has controls that are ill-suited to action gaming.
Microsoft needs an Xboy. Badly.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So what if N64 doesn't play Compact Disc Digital Audio format recordings? By 1996, a CD player was in every household.
Likewise, a GameCube owner who wants DVD capability can pick up an Apex DVD player at Wal-Mart for $50, which isn't that much more than the price difference between the GCN and the Xbox. Having a separate DVD player has an advantage: you can use it on one tv and the console on the other when somebody else in the household is watching 12 straight hours of Meg Ryan movies.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yep. The great Ted Williams referred to it as 'pursuing an acceptable rate of failure'.
crystal method is awwesome.
Also, I like your uid. But I fail to grasp it's significance.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Although he's the billionaire, at least the blame won't go back to him. After all, he doesn't come up with any of these ideas in the first place, he just buys them off of people.
who failed english ?
please re-read what i said. Xbox is ahead of Gamecube in the US in terms of units sold.
It also has the highest attach rate of any modern console system.
Splinter Cell for Xbox outsold Metroid Prime for GameCube during the same pre-christmas sale period. Metroid has been a US money maker for over a decade and the most highly anticipated cube title. Splinter cell, a brand new license from ubisoft, a non-first party publisher releases a title that beats it.
It is only Microsofts poor showing in Japan which keeps xbox a qualified success instead of an outright one.
(and DOA:XBV drove japanese fans wild, selling more xboxes with its introduction than had been sold to date, iirc, so indications that ms is starting to get a clue in the japanese market are slowly materializing)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Bill Gates has said it: Microsoft went into the Gaming Console Market with $2 billion and decided that they can lose it all, just to get a solid presence and foothold.... TWO BILLION that they said was an acceptable loss, just to enter the market...
and they 20 times that to take on Sony, if need be.
Microsoft Barney isn't too bad. In fact, it can be pretty cool.
All of which is neither here nor there. People don't laugh at Microsoft's failures because they're failures. People laugh at Microsoft's failures because they're so lame. And they never seem to learn from them. In my mind, education is the most important function of failure!
Are you willing to handle the truth?
In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail.
/. about Microsoft. For too long we've only heard one side of the story here!
Yes, by all means let's balance out the unwarranted praise constantly thrown around
P.
as everyone's workstations were crashing, and of course, being an OS X junkie, I still had to work, but "when has a new microsoft product ever been the solution to a problem that microsoft didnt cause in the first place?"
Then, even my OS X version of MS Word crashed on me.
I had a friend who used to work at Microsoft. I remeber him having many new ideas at the time. Bill would say at the meeting, "How does this help me sell windows?" Bottom line in the beginning was how does it help me sell windows. I think all the new products are simply "whatever". Name recognition at best, but most important was always How does this help me sell more windows?
Now, the day has come when windows is king and we have to remember the tenet is the same: How can I make them pay for more windows? XP? Longhorn? It's a scary road we are going down: all you files will belong to them, new versions of the way office stores files (always keep ahead of open office), more DRM built in.
Screw you microsoft, forcing me to upgrade, forcing me to register every time I test different hardware in a clients computer I am working on.
It make sense, but its perverted and annoying.
"They've done a really brilliant job in leveraging their strengths in the desktop operating system and applications and tying it to the server," says Davis.
Um, isn't that exactly why they were under investigation in the EU?
> and DOA:XBV drove japanese fans wild, selling more xboxes with its introduction than had been sold to date
Yeah, but still *ten fucking times less* than even the cube sold in the same time frame.
I am not a Microsoft apologist but isn't this just good business. A company as large as M$ (and with rhe R&D budget it has) will try and bring a lot of new products to market.
Many of them will fail
If one or two don't, then that justifies the failure rate.
The X-Box hasn't been the behemoth M$ had hoped. But, the console has given them a presence in the marketplace. They are currently not in a position to control the market in consoles becasue of Sony's power. I bet Sega and Nintendo thought they were invincible at one stage too. I'm sure Sony will not be so complacent...
The smartphone issue is much more of a problem. SPV is being heavily discounted in the UK (Orange are offering them free for contract users) and even the Pocket PC market is not a huge success. They are making inroads but OS5+ and Palm's acquisition of Handspring means that the market will become much more rationalised.
Much as I dislike some of M$'s sharp practice, I seriously believe the computer industry would be poorer for their absence in many respects. We certainly would not have have had the evolution in UI that has happened. KDE, Gnome and even Apple's offerings may have been very different. Some of them may not have even been there in their current form at all. Linux may have been very different too.
Everyone needs pricks to kick against...
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
well, mine is 50 size.
desktop->apperance->caption button->set to 50
you can make it even bigger so it fills the whole screen. you won't miss it!
..how this was informative or insightful, THEY DID NOT FORGET MICROSOFT BOB, IT WAS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE. This is one of the top ten /. shortcuts to a Score:5, Insightful, it just backfired for being a little too overt.
Pimps up, Hos down
Hardware is basically irrelevant in the console market: what matters is who has the best games. You could beat the XBox2 with a Sinclair Spectrum-based console if you had the best games and Microsoft continued to have games of suck. I've yet to see a single Xbox game that would convince me to buy one over a PS2, even if I didn't already have a PC... I don't see any reason why that would change with XBox2.
And, to make it worse, they're trashing their money-making markets by pushing XBox developers to only release on the XBox and not the PC in the hope that the few decent games will convince PC users to buy an XBox too. Yet they make most of their money from Windows, and the main reason to ugprade a PC today (and thereby buy a new copy of Windows) is to run new games! Only a company the size of Microsoft could have two divisions so directly in conflict.
Is this the 'Microsoft Bashing Day' ? oh, I forgot, this is Slashdot. Anyway...
MS has failures as any other entity. To not be affected by those failures is a compliment to them.
As for the correct position of the window close button, I believe that only the MacOS 9 and previous versions got it right. It was a situation that the close button was at the top left corner, away both from the application's menu and the minimize/maximize button.
Windows is not that bad of course. It's a matter of getting used to it. I usually work with windows maximized, and I never minimize them, so the only usage that I have for the top right corner of a window is the close button. So each time I try to close the window, I just drag the mouse towards the screen's top-left corner until it meets the screen border.
Hitting those buttons is a problem of course if windows are not maximized. Then its really hard to hit them, especially after long work hours.
When I, or my company tries to innovate, we'll take a small research team, and develop a technology. We'll build up a prototype, and show it to people. We'll see how people react to it. Then we'll refine it a bit and show another version. The eventual idea being that through a bit of small scale experimentation and testing, we'll decide whether the product is a viable and a decent technology.
When Microsoft tries to innovate, they spend 4 billion dollars making wild predictions about the state of computing in five years and telling the entire world how they're developing some great new technology that's going to change everyone's lives. They then seem to throw the entire company behind it, and spend further billions developing something which they ultimately don't know how the market place will react to.
What I don't understand about Microsoft is why they feel they have to bet the entire farm every time try to innovate, and then spend years and billions catching up when their predictions fail. Wouldn't it make far more sense for them to calmly and quitely develop several technologies in tandem to cover various future possibilities, and then find out over time which ones are the ones worth throwing more money into?
Remember Windows 95? It came with "The Microsoft Network", which was a dialup to a network controlled by MS. It was supposed to be competition to the Internet (much like AOL was at the time). The idea was you dialed up to that and got "selected content". Billy Gates even went as far as to plan a ring of satellites in LEO that would shift the vast quantities of inefficiency between connected machines.
Needless to say, the Internet prevailed, and MSN became something else. MS missed out - they probably could have convinced people IF they'd got in before the ISPs got broad reach.
Other nice ones are IIS, even MS Exchange to a degree, .Net and others. MS is actually pretty slow to do things, that's why they're feeling the Linux bite, and will probably fail at the smartphones and set tops. They're all areas where people have a moral standpoint, which MS can't change, and can't guess at too well.
Of course, one's morals might be adjusted in the face of 50 billion of the folding stuff ;-)
New Coke.
(Let's see how old the Slashdot crowd is...)
...where is its pile of money?
If Microsoft were a cerial company rather than a software company they would have several lines of cerial targeted at different markets.
At the top end they would have a very bland line of products that would be sold to people who actually knew something about nutrition. Those people would complain - "Its a good product but I wish they could make it taste better."
Their next line would be targeted to a wide audience. It would taste better but it would lack something nutrition-wise. It would also be very expensive. "It costs so much and I still have to add fruit to make it complete."
Finally, they would have a low-end cerial that would totally lack nutrition but it would come in a wide variety of flavors that doesn't really appeal to anyone: "Choco-Blueberry-Tangerine Crunch" Nobody buys this stuff but they keep releasing it hoping to someday find that killer blend. Occasionally they take something from this group and move it up the chain to their other line (like they took clippy from "Bob").
Even this stuff is over-priced but they get shelf space because of their name and they keep it around just to make sure there is no room in the market for anyone else. Frankly they don't care if this line makes money or even sells. It does it's job just by sitting on the shelves. It keeps the competition from sitting there instead.
Win-G was so flawed and ill-fated MS denies even creating it now. If you call up MS and ask them anything about Win-G they'll pretend that they have no idea as to what you're talking about.
:)
Win-G was the predicessor to Direct X... It was a game development library that was created by MS that was developed under Windows 3 when game programmers were wanting to make the big switch from DOS games to Windows games. The library was so bad, that very few books were ever published on how to program for the API, and there were VERY few games released that utilized it beause it was so hard to program for, for as weak and slow as it was.
About a year after it's release, they saw it wasn't catching on AT ALL and yanked all references to it from their website, and never spoke of it again. They dropped the Win-G name completely when Direct X was released, and never spoke of it again.
They've done such a good job covering it up, that it usually doesn't even make lists like this.
Error messages in the beta version of Windows saying that they didn't support DRDOS. FUD perhaps, but justified. "Hello, I am havink problems with beta Windows over IkkyDos. Fix this now!"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So you'd pay $400 for Office X+1 "just bug fixes and a speed increase"? You're the person that keeps telemarketers in business, aren't you? Me, I expect a couple of new features at least.
Melinda Freedom?
"It is only Microsofts poor showing in Japan which keeps xbox a qualified success instead of an outright one."
Well, that and the fact that they reportedly lost $1,000,000,000 on the XBox last year... if that's a "qualified success" I'd like to know what you count as a failure.
MS didn't do ALL the R&D. In fact, they copied the whole desktop, GUI thing from Apple the same way KDE and Gnome picked it up.
It's important to remember, MS never really invented anything. They just market stolen ideas well.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I think I saw it at Comdex once - I seem to remember there being a lot of yellow.
Gladly I can say that is my only exposure to it.
I want Rommie from Andromeda as my interface.
The clippy episode exposes one of the most Orwellian features of Microsoft's marketing plan, too. In Office 97/2000, the Office Assistant was a huge feature, and now, the removal of the Assistant is a marketing feature of Office XP.
let's not forget when Microsoft, specifically MSN, wrote one of their contracts wrong for those 3-year $400 rebate deals in California and Oregon. I used to work for MSN cancellations at the time whereby for a limited time, people in those two states could sign up for the rebate deal and wouldn't be responsible for the $400... the stores at Best Buy were pretty much looted.. legally... the call volume was insane. Best Buy employees started advertising this on billboards as one of MSN Employees (I wonder who?) leaked out this information to them. MSN lost millions of dollars just because their lawyer fucked up.. from what I heard from the inside, it was supposed to have been a simple contract but those 2 states had prior laws long ago inforcing about rebate deals that didn't apply today.. the lawyer added in extra clauses he didn't have to and fucked himself over.
MSN $400 Rebate in CA and OR Stopped
I write sig's like I know what I'm talking about.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, Lincoln DID declare war. What happened at Ft. Sumter was only a secession, not a declaration of war. Lincoln pretty much said "You can't do that" and then declared war. Secession was essentially an open invitation to war, but wasn't actually a declaration as I understand it.
Wow, I didn't know Lincoln ever went into the little towns with a torch burning things...I didn't know he was a big fan of raping women, either.
Learn something new everyday...
I'd like to get my teeth in the throat of the gene-damaged asslover who decided that, when searching for files in Windows, the default place to start should be the Start Menu.
I mean, what the fuck, Microsoft, why shouldn't the default be THE ONE PLACE YOU CAN SEARCH EASILY WITH YOUR GODDAMNED EYES?
Sorry. I feel better, almost.
Fact is, with 90% market domination MS has to try new things--if they don't, they'll have stagnant growth, declining margins, and become little more than a chapter in Business textbooks within a few decades. "One hit wonder" is no way to run a business (remember the Osborne One?).
I'd feel more sympathy for the "Seattle Company" if they'd done something more original than cloning CP/M and porting it to the 8086. Digital Research was the company that really got screwed in the IBM/MS deal. Then they did it all over again, with the break-DR/DOS-program.
If you think money is all there is to life, you are infinitely dumber than anyone you may ever try to make fun of.
It's been a long time.
M$ lays off game developers.
And so it begins...
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
but you can call me Rei-chan.
So no, we're not related.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
He didn't say money was all there is to life. The discussion is about business and business is about money.
So, what is important in life?
Family? no money, no house for your family & kids
Friends? no money, no good road trips and bar hopping
Love? no money, a wife dressed like shit w/ no jewerly
Health? no money, no life saving drugs, poor healthcare
Hobbies? no money, no computer, no mountain bike
Travel? no money, no travel
Entertainment? no money, no movies, music or art for you
Education? no money, no university for you, no books
In short, nothing is more important than money, otherwise you would not be working. But, of course you all work for the satisfaction of it. Riiiight.
Give me all of your money and make your bank account
balance $0 and see what's left in your life.
You mistake the journey for the destination. To make it to Europe, I have to cross an ocean. The ocean isn't important. In order to sip a glass of wine, I must first lift the glass to my lips. That motion isn't important. To use my computer, I must first press the power button to turn it on. The button isn't important. The whole idea that money is important is ludicrous. To put it in business terms, money doesn't plow fields. Money doesn't move packages. Money doesn't talk. Money doesn't help customers or write programs or smelt iron or roll paper or compose music or art or writing. Money is a means to an end. A mere bargining chip. Anyone who treats it like more than that is a fool of unparalelled proportions.
I would rather live with a great family with no money than live all alone in the nicest house in the country.
I would rather have the greatest freinds and no money to party with than be a billionaire who has to hire whores to keep him company.
I would rather have a great love than have all the money in the world and never have known the feeling.
Health I don't really have to worry about. I'm Canadian.
Hobbies don't need constant money infusions to keep moving, and money isn't the only means to getting what you need. Trust me. I've been there. FOR A LONG, LONG TIME.
You don't need money to travel. A good walking stick(free) and a bit of knowlege(free) will let you go wherever you'd like to go on the continent with all the food you desire.
As for Entertainment, since when do you need to have money to enjoy a tune, or a work of art? I assure you that not all expression has a price tag.
Education? Education is an interesting thing. To many, it isn't really that useful. It's certainly not important as anything more than a means to an end...but it's not something that you MUST buy. As it has often been said -- Information wants to be free. There are plenty of free sources of information for the resourceful.
On the other hand, I didn't say that money wasn't the slightest bit useful. I just said it wasn't the most useful thing out there. And you managed to ignore the subtext of the parent post. Let me spell it out for you. Of course there's no business sense in programming after hours for free, it's for those things that are more important than money, varied and plenty, that one programs for free. You can't talk about business and volunteer work in the same way. Saying "why volunteer your time and work? You're not getting paid for it!" isn't a business case, it's missing the point of doing it in the first place. It's saying that money is the most important thing in life, and anything that doesn't involve getting paid is just a waste, because you could be making money instead.
Personally, I'd love to rid myself of this addiction to money. I'd love to get a farm someday, install some solar panels and windmills, and live out my life without ever seeing another looney, quarter, or dime again. Will it require money? Sure, that's how the world works. But it's just a means to an end. It's not that important.
It's been a long time.
You have to be kidding me. You save a document in some obscure format (RTF) instead of the program's native format (like any decent person would), and you expect to read it without any problems? So a program which runs on Linux couldn't read the crappy RTF format. They probably only wrote the writing filter to allow transferring to the M$ world. I'm sure I could find plenty of word processing programs written for M$ Windows which suck worse.
Okay M$ fanboy, does M$ Office support all the standard formats one would see with Linux, *BSD, or Unix? Do they support LaTeX? Do they support DVI? Do they support Troff? Let me guess, the answer is no.
Why do you expect Linux programs to support M$ files (especially when M$ does everything they can to hide their format), and yet your favorite software company doesn't support common formats to which the specifications are open and available to anyone???
And don't forget the classic "Bob for Dummies" book. I still kick myself for not buying a copy of that sure-to-be-a-collectible book.
(For those who don't know of Bob [see http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html for some screenshots] it was aimed to users new to computer. Rumor had it that it was the brainchild of the then newly-married Mrs. Gates.)